CHAPTER XIV. Pentonville Road

Pentonville Road was created as the eastern third of the
New Road from Paddington, opened in 1756 to divert livestock drovers from the West End and Holborn on their
way to Smithfield. Pentonville did not then exist. The road
from Battle Bridge (the future King's Cross) passed by
fields and bowling greens before reaching the Angel Inn,
where Islington High Street gave way to the still-rural
road (now the upper half of St John Street) running south
towards Smithfield and the City. By the time this part
of the New Road received its present name, in 1857,
Pentonville was a long-established suburb. Pentonville
Road itself, developed as a good-class residential address
from the 1770s to the 1820s, was filling with shops and
lodging-houses, its population becoming poorer and more
numerous. The fields south of Pentonville had been completely built up for many years and, while the livestock
market at Smithfield had yet to close, Pentonville Road
was no longer a mere bypass but an integral part of the
northern metropolis.

The road today has no defining characteristic, beyond
the heavy traffic thundering up and down 'Pentonville
Hill', as the descent from Claremont Square towards
King's Cross was known before the New Road was formally renamed. At the east end enough late Georgian
houses survive to evoke something of its former suburban
character. Elsewhere, a very few scraps of the original
development are left, together with some Victorian shops
and dwellings. Only towards the junction of King's Cross
Road is it still recognizably the place detailed by John
O'Connor in his well-known sunset view of St Pancras
Station (Ill. 429).

429. 'From Pentonville Road looking West: Evening', by John O'Connor, 1884. On the right is St James's, Pentonville,
on the left are Penton Place (now Penton Rise) and the shops of the former Lower Queen's Row.
The view appears to be taken from the roof of Dunn & Hewett's cocoa factory (right foreground)

Industrial and commercial buildings, often on a larger
scale, replaced many of the original houses from the later
nineteenth century. Many of these have themselves
been demolished or, if not, converted to new uses.
Redevelopment from the late twentieth century, much of
it on a fairly large scale too, has moved from offices in
the 1970s and 80s to apartment blocks in recent years—
especially in the form of student hostels (see Ill. 428, page
337).

430. The New Road. Extract from a map of 1755, showing the proposed route from Tottenham Court to
Islington High Street, with alternative lines east of Battle Bridge. Land owned by Henry Penton labelled 'I'

The present chapter recounts the development of
Pentonville Road generally, and describes particular buildings roughly as far west as the parish boundary of St
James, Clerkenwell (see Ills 426–7). The short section of
the south side west of King's Cross Road, and the buildings west of No. 270 on the north side, including the whole
frontage from Caledonian Road to York Way, are therefore
not included.

Planning and construction

At the time of its creation in 1756, and for long after, the
New Road was unparalleled in London as a piece of largescale road-planning. (fn. 1) The precursor of later bypasses and
ring-roads, it retained a separate identity until 1857. By
then, as building development had taken place, it had
become divided into an unwieldy series of Rows, Terraces
and Places, all of which were abolished in 1857 when the
Metropolitan Board of Works renamed and renumbered it
in three parts as the Marylebone, Euston and Pentonville
Roads. (fn. 2)

The New Road was planned to start from the junction
of the Harrow and Edgware Roads in Paddington, leading
north-east more or less in a straight line to Tottenham
Court and thence to Battle Bridge. Finally, with a turn to
the south-east, it was to cut through fields belonging to
Henry Penton MP, ending near the Angel, Islington. This
last stretch had two possible routes: one through the
middle of Penton's estate, between the bowling greens
there and White Conduit Fields to the north, to join the
south end of Upper Street near the junction with what is
now Liverpool Road; the other mostly keeping to the
south side of his estate, past the New River Company's
upper reservoir, and on to the Angel itself (Ill. 430).
Penton held 'very great Objections' to the former route as
'detrimental' to his property, but none to the latter, which
was the one eventually selected. (fn. 3) The prospect of lucrative future building development was presumably not in
Penton's mind, for he thus gave up an outstanding opportunity to maximize his frontages to the new road.

A broad, relatively straight thoroughfare such as this, it
was argued, would connect with all the main roads leading
south into London, and would provide a direct link
between the western and eastern extremities of the
metropolis. Gentlemen and men of business could then
travel quickly by carriage between City and suburbs
without being 'jolted three miles over the stones, or
perhaps detained three hours by a stop in some narrow
street'. (fn. 4) The road would also help deal with the additional
traffic expected to follow the proposed new bridge at
Blackfriars (built in the 1760s). In times of emergency,
troops would be able to cross London unhindered without
entering the centre. But above all it was as a way of taking
the twice-weekly flood of sheep and cattle bound for
Smithfield away from Oxford Street and the narrow,
winding route further east that the New Road was built.
That is why it stopped at the Angel, where the Islington
road and St John Street provided a direct way south to the
market, rather than going on into the City.

The promoters were landowners, farmers, merchants
and tradesmen living in and around London—'gentlemen
of the greatest eminence and property'. (fn. 5) Though the
twenty-five individuals who petitioned Parliament for an
enabling Act are not known, some prominent figures can
be identified, mostly from among the trustees of the
St Marylebone and Islington Turnpike trusts, the two
existing bodies that were given the responsibility of constructing and maintaining the road. They included
Hammond Crosse, of the Bedfordshire and Clerkenwell
brewing family; Richard Whishaw, a Lincoln's Inn attorney and Secretary to the Committee of Gentlemen
Practitioners; and George Errington, a landowner in
Middlesex and Essex and later High Sheriff of London. (fn. 6)
Throughout the committee stage in Parliament the petitioners' interests were represented by an agent, William
Godfrey—perhaps William Godfrey of Paddington
Green (d. 1766), who had estates in Middlesex and Essex. (fn. 7)
Crosse, Whishaw, Errington, Godfrey and Charles
Dingley were all on the special committee of twenty-one
Islington turnpike trustees set up in May 1756 to manage
the making of the road between Tottenham Court and
the Angel. (fn. 8)

The 'great projector' (fn. 9) Dingley (d. 1769) is generally
credited with the leading role. He and his brother and
partner Robert, an architect and philanthropist, had made
their fortunes years before, trading with Russia and
Persia. (fn. 10) In his evidence to the Parliamentary committee
in February 1756, Dingley predicted that the road would
be 'one of the most profitable Undertakings he ever knew',
offering to put up £1,000 to pay for toll-houses. (fn. 11) He was
also behind the creation of City Road in 1761, which
carried the New Road on into the City, and projected two
more, ultimately unexecuted, roads—an extension of the
City Road to the Mansion House, and another linking the
New Road with Camden Town. (fn. 12)

When the plan was before Parliament it met opposition
from landowners along the proposed route and some
of the Islington turnpike trustees, who argued that the
existing roads were adequate. The Duke of Bedford
protested that dust from the road would affect his land
immediately east of Tottenham Court, inconveniencing
his tenants, while any roadside building would block the
view from his residence, Bedford House—prompting
Horace Walpole to remark that the Duke rarely came
to town and anyway was 'too shortsighted to see
the prospect'. (fn. 13) Wider opinion was supportive. The
Gentleman's Magazine stressed the primacy of public over
private interests, asserting that 'streets and roads are to
inland trade what seas are to foreign', every new road being
a 'kind of new mine that encreases the wealth of the community'. (fn. 14)

The Act was passed in May 1756 and the two turnpike
commissions immediately set about marking out the
route. (fn. 15) In the Clerkenwell section, several surveyors were
involved. A preliminary survey and plans had been provided by Edward Cullen, who was paid six guineas in
August 1755. (fn. 16) Paul Jollage, surveyor, was paid five guineas
for his 'trouble' in planning the road, and a land surveyor
named Marsh provided plans and property information
for both the Islington and Marylebone trustees. (fn. 17)
Labourers working on the road were supervised by the
Islington trust's surveyors William Thomas and James
Inglish. (fn. 18)

Construction was largely confined to the removal of
hedges and banks to make a sufficiently level surface, the
digging of ditches, and the erection of fences, gates and
toll-houses—mostly from old ships' timbers. As the road
was to be used particularly by drovers, the enabling Act
forbade the paving of the surface, which was left as turf.
However, the pot-holes caused by heavy rain and
workmen's carts had to be filled with gravel or ballast, and
this was eventually extended over the whole surface. (fn. 19) As
early as 13 September 1756 coaches, carriages and horsemen were passing daily in 'great numbers' over the road
from Islington to Battle Bridge, and the whole route was
opened four days later. (fn. 20)

Compensation had to be paid to landowners and leaseholders, not just for the 40 ft width of the road itself,
but for another 10 ft each side for ditches and fencing. An
important clause in the Act, never wholly obeyed, forbade
building within 50 ft of the road, to admit enough sun and
air to keep it dry, and to stop dust from inconveniencing
residents. (fn. 21) Henry Penton gave up part of the western
bowling green and the 'Bowl house' there, in return for a
larger building, with a room over, designed and built by
Woodhouse Coker, the turnpike trustees' carpenter.
Robert Bartholomew, landlord of the Angel, whose
sheep pens stood on the route, asked for money towards
replacements; and the New River Company was given
£150 towards building a brick wall on the north and west
sides of its Upper Pond reservoir. (fn. 22)

Early development

It was some years before building development took off
along the New Road east of Battle Bridge. Until then, the
ground on either side remained in use chiefly for grazing.
The opening of the road must have increased the demand
hereabouts for sheep and cattle lairs (or layers), where
animals were kept for fattening before going on to market.
Parts of the ground, including the Penton estate, continued
to be dug for gravel and clay for making bricks and tiles, an
activity which went back in this area to the seventeenth
century at least. (fn. 23) The road was, at first, rather too far from
the built-up area to attract builders, and in any case its
opening coincided with bad harvests, the onset of the Seven
Years War, tight credit and a downturn in house-building. (fn. 24)
But by the late 1760s the picture was changing, and leasehold development was taking off along the New Road.

Building on the Penton-owned frontages was slow.
Henry Penton III (d. 1812), who oversaw the development
of Pentonville, inherited the estate from his father in 1762.
His first attempt at leasehold development seems to have
been in 1764, when a St Marylebone plasterer, William
Lloyd, agreed to build houses on the south side of the road
west of the reservoir. (fn. 25) This proved a false start, but in
1767 the Belvidere tavern was built on the north side, on
the corner of the new Penton Street (see page 351). (fn. 26)

Houses near by, on both sides, in King's Row and
Queen's Row followed from the late 1760s. By the late
1780s development had spread some way east and west of
this nucleus. On the north side, Pleasant Row and Pleasant
Place, west of Southampton (now Calshot) Street, went
up about 1783–7. (fn. 27) The late 1780s saw the building
of Pentonville Chapel and a large detached residence,
Cumming House, and houses in Cumming Place. (fn. 28) East of
Penton Street, Winchester Place and the Penton Arms
on the corner of Baron Street were built in the late 1780s.
On the south side, the triangle bounded by Penton Place
(now Penton Rise) and Hamilton Row (now part of King's
Cross Road) was mostly built up in the late 1780s and 90s,
after some earlier building on the east side of Penton Place
(see Ill. 528 on page 406).

431. The New Road, looking east past the turnpike gate at the junction with Penton Rise, 1786. On the left are houses in
King's Row, on the right part of Queen's Row

The last part to be developed was to the east, on the
New River Company's estate and land formerly belonging
to the Angel inn. The frontages here were filled with
houses from about 1818 until the mid- 1820s: Angel
Terrace and Claremont Terrace on the south side, Angel
Place and Claremont Place, together with Claremont
Chapel, on the north.

Though differing to a certain extent in size and layout,
nearly all this first-generation building consisted of goodclass private houses. Most were three storeys high, with
two-bay frontages, though there were exceptions, notably
some four-storey houses in Winchester Place, Claremont
Terrace and Claremont Place (Ills 431–4, 439, 445). There
were at least two houses of only two storeys (Nos 62 and
64). Nearly all had conventional side-passage plans, with
two rooms to a floor (Ill. 435). On the north side, many of
the houses were raised above the level of the roadway, on
semi-basements or basement vaults, and consequently any
shops later built out in front usually had steps up at the
back.

Why some houses at the west end of Pentonville Road
were allowed to be built hard up against the roadway, as at
Batchelor Place and Pleasant Place, rather than 50 ft back
as required by the New Road Act, is not known. However,
none of these early incursions were on the Penton, New
River Company or Angel estates. The turnpike trustees'
minutes are silent on the matter, so a blind eye may have
been turned. By the 1820s some parts of the New Road in
and around Battle Bridge had been exempted from the
50ft rule, perhaps retrospectively. (fn. 29)

Changing character

For more than half a century after it was built up, the New
Road between Battle Bridge and the Angel was solidly residential and apparently respectable, the address typically
of gentlemen and merchants. There were self-styled
'Esquires' in some of the best houses, such as those in
Winchester Place and Claremont Place, into the 1860s. (fn. 30)
But within a few years of Queen Victoria's accession
several houses had become business premises. There were
a number of professional occupants, particularly surgeons
and physicians, but more often than not some craft or
manufacturing activity was being carried on. Directories
of the 1840s list an engraver, a chain-maker, two
chronometer-makers, a zinc worker, cabinet-makers,
printers, and bookbinders. By this date there were also a
fair number of shopkeepers and general tradesmen. (fn. 31)

Pentonville Road houses. All demolished

432. Nos 177–183 (formerly part of Clarence Place) in 1964.
Part of a development of the 1780s and 90s by John Weston, brickmaker

433. Nos 124 and 126 in 1963. Built as part of King's Row,
1770s and 80s

Architecturally, this increasing commercialization was
manifested in shops, mostly single-storey extensions to
houses. But the earliest instance, Athol Place, was a row of
two-storey houses with shops, built about 1839 on part of
the gardens belonging to the Belvidere. Within a few years
more shops had been built on the south side, in Lower
Queen's Row, and in front of houses on the north side, in
Cumming Place and King's Row (the latter as a continuation of Athol Place). More than half the houses west of
Penton Street and Claremont Square had lost their front
gardens to shops by the 1870s.

The new Metropolitan Board of Works was at first
stringent in refusing forecourt shops, on the grounds that
they projected beyond the existing building line, turning
down several applications in 1856 and 1857. (fn. 32) The district
surveyor, Robert Sibley, who lived in Pentonville Road,
told the Board he was unsure if these structures could be
classed as projections, and on at least two occasions magistrates dismissed cases he had brought against owners, on
the grounds that the shops were buildings in their own
right, or additions to buildings, and not projections. (fn. 33) In
neither case was mention made of the 50 ft rule, which had
been reaffirmed by the Metropolis Turnpike Road Act of
1826. (fn. 34)

Subsequently, in the 1860s–80s applications to build
shop-additions were generally allowed by the board. But
in 1887 they were refused at the former Winchester Place
opposite Claremont Square (Nos 56–92), perhaps on
account of its superior architectural character or setting,
as effectively the fourth side of Claremont Square. (fn. 35) Nor
would the New River Company permit them on its own
Pentonville Road frontage. By 1900 only a few houses on
the Penton frontage still kept their gardens, including
Winchester Place. On the north side of the road east of
the Penton estate Nos 14–44 never acquired shops, but
some later had workshops built over the rear gardens, as
with Betjemann & Sons' works at Nos 34–42.

436. No. 178 Pentonville Road in the 1930s. Section showing characteristic arrangement of house
with later shop and workshop additions to front and rear

As well as shops, rear workshops became common in the
mid-to-late nineteenth century, as the character of the
road became increasingly industrial, in many instances
leaving the old houses sandwiched between long, low
structures (Ill. 9). In some cases two, three or more adjoining hybrid house—workshops of this sort were acquired
and thrown together to form an extensive factory, as at
Dunn & Hewett's cocoa factory, at Nos 130–138.

During the 1870s and 80s more and more premises
were given over to light manufactures of various sorts,
including musical instruments, furniture, jewellery, and
artificial flowers. Several photographic studios were also
established. From the outset there had been a number of
taverns, and by this period there were numerous coffeeshops and dining-rooms, no doubt to a great extent
catering to workers in the many factories and other
establishments. (fn. 36)

Most of the public houses in Pentonville Road were
rebuilt in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Though none were of the scale and elaboration seen in
better-heeled areas, there were some quirky designs, such
as the Crown at No. 128a (1873–4), with an obelisk-like
clock-tower on the corner (Ill. 438). (fn. 37) Another early
rebuilding was the Italianate-style Belvidere (1875–6, see
page 352). The Welsh Bull at No. 120 was enlarged in 1881
and remodelled internally in the early 1890s (see page
354). Later rebuildings along the north side of the road
included the Lord Vernon Arms of 1901 (No. 180, later
188), another showy design with a clock-turret (Ill. 437),
and the King George IV of the late 1890s (No. 156), a
plainer building with bay windows on the long front to
Cumming Street. (fn. 38) Of those mentioned, only the Belvidere
and Welsh Bull survive, neither of them now as pubs.

Though there was already much poverty in the area,
Pentonville Road received a sharp jolt in the early 1900s,
one of the chief factors being the introduction of trams,
which brought about an unprecedented degree of mobility among the working-classes. Better shops and better
lodgings were easily found elsewhere. Writing to the
London County Council in 1908, H. C. Braun, proprietor
of an experimental engineering works at Nos 236 and 238,
claimed that some 60 per cent of local shops had closed.
His claim is supported by the records made four or five
years later by Inland Revenue valuers. Many of the forecourt shops were dilapidated, devalued and untenanted. (fn. 39)
Braun himself planned (unsuccessfully) to build bigger
premises, which he hoped would make a 'good entrance'
at the road's west end and help it recover from its 'bankrupt' condition: only redevelopment with large factories
could save Pentonville Road from becoming 'a scandal and
disgrace to London'. (fn. 40)

So it proved. Pentonville Road in the first two-thirds of
the twentieth century saw redevelopment with a number
of large warehouses and factories, and a general decline in
the resident population. One of the largest developments
was the depot built for the shoe company Lilley & Skinner.
The Ormond Engineering Co., based in Holford Mews,
built the large factory-warehouse at Nos 91–99 in the late
1930s, and another at No. 189 in the 1950s. Dunn &
Hewett expanded their premises. There were also new
workshops on a smaller scale, in speculative blocks of the
1930s and, more modestly, in the conversion of houses and
shops for manufacturing of all kinds. Makers of weighing
machines, electric lamps, toy-eyes, amusement machines,
rubber jointings, toilet brushes, band saws, tin boxes,
typewriters, motor radiators, billiard tables, Christmas
crackers and toffee—all could be found on Pentonville
Road in the 1930s and 40s. (fn. 41)

After the Second World War, bomb damage and general
obsolescence left parts of the road badly in need of
renewal. By the 1950s and 60s, municipal housing developments were transforming the Pentonville hinterland to
the north, but Pentonville Road itself was reserved for
business use, apart from the triangle between Penton Rise
and Weston Rise, where the Weston Rise Estate was built
in the mid-to-late 1960s (see page 319).

The road maintained its mixed but predominantly
industrial character until the depression years of the
1970s, mostly through the efforts of local planners. The
London County Council had been trying after the war to
prevent industrial expansion in central London, but by the
1960s Finsbury Borough Council was doing all it could to
retain light industry, rejecting proposals in 1962 for offices
on a bomb-damaged site at Nos 210–234, which remained
vacant for several years, when a scheme for warehousing
was accepted. (fn. 42) This policy continued under Islington
Council, Finsbury's successor.

By the 1970s it was unworkable, and with so much of
the road in decay the pressure to allow offices became irresistible. The Sterling Land Co. was given the go-ahead for
two large office towers, King's Cross House, begun in
1973. Islington councillors subsequently expressed regret
at having endorsed such an architecturally monstrous
scheme. At the other end of the road property had been
blighted since the war by LCC and then Greater London
Council plans to widen the Angel intersection. This
scheme was shelved in 1975, and in 1978 Islington Council
permitted London Merchant Securities to build the Angel
Centre offices on the corner of St John Street.

In general, however, Islington continued to resist officebuilding, even though refusals were likely to be overturned
on appeal, as at Nos 207–221 in 1979–a time when the
GLC was favouring office developments near major
railway stations; and again at the Angel in the 1980s, where
initial attempts to prevent London Merchant Securities
building offices on the north side of the road failed. (fn. 43) The
developers' vision of Pentonville Road as a 'golden mile'
of office blocks ultimately faded. Since the early 1990s the
main redevelopments here have been for residential buildings in one form or another including private flats and a
hotel. West of Penton Rise there is now a concentration of
student apartments, including the former office-towers of
King's Cross House.

North side: Islington High Street to Baron Street

Apart from a small portion belonging to the Penton estate
at the corner of Baron Street, the frontage here was part
of the land belonging historically with the Angel. The
story of the old coaching inn itself and the surviving
former public house of 1899 (No. 2 Pentonville Road) is
given in Chapter XVII.

The Penton ground was built up in the late eighteenth
century, but development of the Angel property did not
take place until later. It was probably held up by a protracted Chancery suit, settled in 1817 with the division of
the ground between several claimants. On this north side
of the road the Angel and some 350 ft of frontage went
to the Rev. William Coxe, historian and Archdeacon of
Wiltshire, his family and associates. The remaining 200 ft
of frontage to the west went to William Dyke Whitmarsh
of New Sarum, Wiltshire; Martha Young (widow of
William Young, the original plaintiff), and one Sarah
Foster. (fn. 44)

All soon set about letting their ground for building. (fn. 45)
Angel Place (later Nos 2–12 Pentonville Road), a short row
of houses adjoining the Angel inn, was built c. 1818–21,
Claremont Chapel in 1818 and half of Claremont Place
(later Nos 30–44) c.1819. The remainder of Claremont
Place (later Nos 14–28) followed over the next six years or
so. (fn. 46) (Older houses on the Penton estate west of the chapel
were also at one time numbered in Claremont Place.) (fn. 47)

These houses, mostly of four storeys over basements,
may have been designed by the architect and surveyor
Henry Rhodes, who is known to have acted professionally
for the Coxe family elsewhere, and was a party to the conveyance of the Angel estate. (fn. 48) Private stabling, a rarity
along Pentonville Road, was provided for Claremont Place
in Angel Mews; a stable-yard behind Angel Place was
reserved for the use of the inn. Builders and first lessees
included Charles Douglas, gentleman, of Chapel Street
(Chapel Market); Matthew Elwall of St Giles-withoutCripplegate, painter and glazer; and John Reynolds,
painter, of City Road. Many seem to have been involved
at the same time with Thomas Richard Read in building
Claremont Terrace opposite. (fn. 49)

Of the original houses, a few remain in what was
Claremont Place (Ill. 439). Nos 42 and 44 in particular,
with their long front gardens and curving steps up to the
raised ground floors, preserve an impression of the road's
sometime character. Claremont Chapel adjoining was
externally embellished later in the century.

440. Former workshops of G. Betjemann & Sons at the rear of
Nos 34–42 Pentonville Road; former Claremont Chapel and
part of Claremont United Reformed Church
buildings, White Lion Street, at right

Early occupants were mostly gentlemen, clerics or men
of business. (fn. 50) They included, in the early 1820s, Thomas
Arrowsmith, proprietor of John Bull, and Richard Barlow,
a bill-broker. (fn. 51) From the outset not all of the houses were
in single occupation, rooms or floors being offered to
'highly respectable' lodgers. (fn. 52)

Angel Place was partly in commercial or industrial use
by the early 1840s. The business of Alfred Syer, builder's
ironmonger and glass-merchant, remained from about
1853 until the 1960s, at one time occupying several
houses. (fn. 53) Many coal-hole and manhole covers in the vicinity carry his name. Claremont Place remained largely residential well into the 1870s, though by the 1860s jewellers
and other craftsmen were living and working here,
including, from 1859, G. Betjemann & Sons, makers of
dressing-cases and other specialist cabinetwork, at No. 36.

This well-known firm, established in the 1830s in
Upper Ashby Street off Northampton Square, developed
a range of luxury goods in metal and wood meeting the
requirements of the very top end of the market. One of
its most successful products, patented in 1881, was a
decanter-holder called the Tantalus, designed to prevent
pilfering by means of a lockable bar over the stoppers. The
firm acquired a greater, posthumous, fame through (Sir)
John Betjeman, great-grandson of the founder, who disliked and despised the business and, having refused to take
on the mantle of fourth-generation boss, closed it down in
1945. By that time the firm occupied Nos 34–44, and had
covered the back gardens with workshops (Ills 439, 440),
recalled by Betjeman in Summoned by Bells. At the front,
an alteration made by Betjemanns was the creation in 1927
of the curved in-and-out driveway at Nos 34–40, with iron
gates under overthrows with lamps. Herbert Wright acted
as architect. The gates and the front railings have now
gone. (fn. 54)

After Betjemanns went into liquidation, Nos 34–42
were taken over as the head office of the fine-art publishers the Medici Society, who remained until 1999. (fn. 55) Relics
of the buildings' past were still evident in the early 1990s,
including etched glass in the doors to the old showroom
and counting-house (Ill. 441). The buildings are unoccupied at the time of writing (2007).

Nos 20–32, Angel House, was built in 1934 by Ansel
Blaustein of Angel Estates, Pentonville Road, father of
the property developers Cyril and Leonard Blaustein or
Blausten. The architect was Leonard Blaustein, and the
builders were named as Leonards Ltd. (fn. 56) A six-storey
block, faced in red brick with a stone cornice, it comprised
shops and workshops with dwellings above. Many of the
workshops were converted to offices and self-contained
flats in the mid-1980s. (fn. 57)

The two dark-glazed office blocks on the east side of
Angel House were built in the 1980s by London Merchant
Securities, the developers of the Angel Centre opposite.
All three were designed by Elsom, Pack & Roberts (now
EPR Architects). (fn. 58)Nos 2–12, built in 1985–7, was first
occupied by the life assurance company Aetna UK Ltd.
No. 14 followed in 1988–9, after an appeal against the
refusal of Islington Council to allow a tall office building
on the site, then occupied by three listed houses. At the
appeal, the Department of Environment Inspector, disagreeing with the council, cited the increasing popularity
of the Angel area for offices, and predicted that in years
to come the old houses, if retained, would seem out of
place, 'preserved out of misplaced sentiment'. (fn. 59) The
new building was let in 1990 to British Rail's Freight
Division. (fn. 60)

West of the former Claremont Chapel, Nos 46–52 is a
1990s office redevelopment in pastiche Georgian style.
Previously the site had been occupied by dwelling-houses
with, at Nos 46 and 48, a yard with a coach-building works
and livery stables, built around 1820 by William Argent. (fn. 61)
More than a century later, Henry Argent was trading here
as a house agent and valuer. (fn. 62) The yard is now named
Freeman Mews, after Albert Freeman, a horse-dealer who
took over most of the property in the 1920s.

Set in the walls of the new passageway to Freeman
Mews is a series of coloured tile-pictures from the earlier
buildings, showing hunting and other old-time scenes,
including one or two probably of characters from Dickens
in the Clerkenwell area (Ill. 442). These were presumably
made for Freeman, whose name appears on a facia-board
in one of the pictures. (fn. 63) The small factory-workshop at the
back of the yard was built for Freeman in 1936 to the
design of Herbert Wright. (fn. 64)

On the corner of Baron Street, No. 54 was built about
1789 as the Penton Arms public house. Much altered and
extended, it has been called in recent years the Pint Pot
and is now the Castle. The architects Finch Hill & Paraire
did some work here in 1862, and in the early 1890s the
long ground-floor extension was refitted by John Cox
Dear, architect, with a series of small private bars or
booths and a larger saloon bar at the north end. The
chimney stack dividing the front of the main building
dates from Dear's remodelling, and was built to provide a
fireplace in the saloon. (fn. 65)

No. 44A, former Claremont Chapel

Claremont Chapel was one of several Independent or
Congregationalist chapels built in London and the
provinces by Thomas Wilson of Highbury, a former silk
mercer and ribbon manufacturer, who was also active in
the founding of the University of London and the
London Missionary Society. During the early 1800s he
was busily engaged in chapel-building in the emerging
suburbs, to cater for London's expanding population,
and funded two other chapels on the New Road—at
Tonbridge Place in Marylebone, and at the Paddington
end, in Homer Place. (fn. 66)

Wilson had acquired the freehold of a two-acre site on
the New Road in Pentonville in 1818 from Martha Young
and her family, for about £700, before laying out nearly
£6,000 in building the chapel on part of it. The remainder of the site was let for development as Argent's livery
stables (above). Included in these costs was £203 17s 8d to
a Mr Wallen 'for surveying', almost certainly a reference
to William Wallen (d. 1853), a surveyor then based
in Finsbury, who is known to have designed two
Nonconformist chapels of the early 1820s at Newbury in
Berkshire and Newark, Nottinghamshire. Wallen's substantial fee perhaps included the design of the chapel and
other work to do with its construction. (fn. 67)

Claremont Chapel, which took its name from the
Surrey residence of the recently deceased Princess
Charlotte Augusta, was opened for worship in October
1819. Various prominent Congregationalist ministers
attended the first service, including Thomas Lewis of the
Union Chapel, Islington, John Morison of the Union
Chapel in Sloane Street, Chelsea, Thomas Raffles of
Liverpool, and John Leifchild, the latter two preaching on
the day. However, it was not till March 1820 that an
Independent congregation was established here, and
October 1822 before a resident pastor was appointed—the
Rev. John Blackburn, formerly of Finchingfield, Essex. (fn. 68)

443. Claremont Chapel, c. 1828. William Wallen, architect,
1818–19

Wilson's chapels were designed on functional lines to
hold large congregations, and Claremont in its original
form was externally spare of detail, except for an
Ionic entrance portico (Ill. 443). But it was wellproportioned, and given additional gravitas by standing
slightly higher than the road, behind neo-Classical iron
gate-piers and railings. The interior, which could hold
1,500 worshippers, attracted attention for the arrangement
of the gallery, which ran continuously around all four
walls on thin iron columns, forming an oval well. There
were also 'light and elegant' upper galleries for Sunday
school children. (fn. 69)

444. Former Claremont Chapel, No. 44a Pentonville Road,
in 2007

Various alterations and repairs were made during the
1840s, and in 1847 a Sunday school was added at the rear. (fn. 70)
Sash windows of wood and cast-iron were installed in the
galleries in 1853–4, under the supervision of Henry Owen,
a surveyor of Great Marlborough Street, who went on to
re-glaze most of the building. In 1854–5 Owen improved
the approach to the chapel by adding a stuccoed
balustraded terrace either side of the entrance steps
(Ill. 444). (fn. 71)

Externally, the building's present appearance owes
much to alterations made in 1860, for which money was
raised at a three-day bazaar, held at Myddelton Hall,
Islington, under the patronage of the contractor Sir
(Samuel) Morton Peto and his wife. (fn. 72) The formerly plain
brick façade was stuccoed over and enriched with Classical
details. Inside, the gallery—inconvenient to those who sat
behind the minister—was reduced to three sides. (fn. 73) Some,
if not all of these alterations were the work of an architect referred to at the time as 'Mr Tarry'—perhaps
John Tarring, a London architect who specialized in
Nonconformist chapels. (fn. 74)

Poorly attended and short of funds by the 1890s, the
chapel was sold to the London Congregational Union for
use as a Mission Station for the increasingly distressed
Pentonville district, closing in 1899. It was altered in 1902
for a new role as the Union's Central London Mission.
The upper galleries were removed and the chapel became
Claremont Hall, part of a mission institute developed over
the next few years to the north, on White Lion Street (see
page 387). (fn. 75) It was probably then that the side entrances
were given their round-headed doorways with open pediments on consoles.

By the early 1960s Claremont Hall had been let by the
mission for commercial use. It has since been sub-let to the
Crafts Council, re-opening in 1991 after conversion to a
white-walled exhibition space (designed by Barry Mazur),
with a library and offices above. (fn. 76) In 2006 the Crafts
Council closed the gallery to concentrate on 'developing
national initiatives with partner organizations'. The building was refurbished over the next two years and now provides an improved research library and resource centre. (fn. 77)

Baron Street to Penton Street

This part of the road was built up with terrace-houses in
the late 1780s under the name Winchester Place, and these
survived essentially intact until the 1930s (Ill. 445). By
then they had long ceased to be private residences, and
were mostly in commercial use, ranging from artistic
lampshade manufacture at one end (No. 58) to marble
masonry at the other (Nos 88–94). None were shops. An
application had been made in 1887 to build over the forecourts with shops, as elsewhere in the road, but was
refused by the Metropolitan Board of Works. (fn. 78) Some redevelopment occurred in the late 1930s, with light-industrial
premises at Nos 90–92 and 86–88, and continued after the
war. The last remaining houses were demolished in the
1990s.

Winchester Place (demolished)

Winchester Place was built in 1786–90 on the southern part
of the site of Dobney's bowling green (page 327), taking its
name from the home town of the Pentons. (fn. 79) The houses here
became Nos 56–92 Pentonville Road; No. 94 was originally
numbered in Penton Street and was not strictly part of
Winchester Place; the site is now subsumed in Nos 90–92.

It was not a uniform development. On the corner of
Penton Street, the sites of Nos 90–94 were a portion of
the ground covered by John Pennie's building agreement
of 1767, most of which was taken up by the Belvidere on
the west side of Penton Street, and the south end of
Penton Street itself. A pair of three-storey houses, later
Nos 90 and 92, was erected, their relatively broad fronts
compensating for the shallowness of the plots, restricted
by the gardens of houses in Penton Street. They were later
thrown into one with the house at the corner of Penton
Street, probably by Henry Webb Wilkins & Son, who were
here from the 1860s and built showrooms in front (Ill.
446). This firm specialized in marble for statuary
and other purposes, describing themselves in the early
twentieth century as marble merchants, general and
monumental masons, sculptors, table-top manufacturers,
shopfitters and interior decorators in marble and tiles. (fn. 80)

The main part of Winchester Place, a terrace of twelve
houses (later Nos 66–88) overlooking the New River
Company's reservoir, was built on ground taken by Edmund
Hague, painter and builder, by a building agreement of
March 1786; this also took in the Penton Grove site later
occupied by White Lion Street School. As befitted the site,
'presumed the most eligible Part of the Penton Estate',
Hague's terrace was conceived in terms of some pretension,
and the design was probably that shown by the architect
Aaron Henry Hurst at the Royal Academy in 1788. (fn. 81) Hague,
who was also developing in Chapel Street (Market), went
bankrupt about 1789, and it was presumably on account of
this that the original scheme was abandoned. Three plots at
the east end of the ground, with 20 ft frontages, were let at
Hague's direction to the bricklayer Joshua Hodgkinson in
February 1787 and built up in the next couple of years, the
first two (Nos 66 and 68) apparently as the end 'pavilion' of
an unrealized grand terrace, with high, partly balustraded
parapets. (fn. 82) The third house (No. 70) was enlarged by the
addition of an entrance bay at the side, on extra ground,
with Venetian windows. Two or all three were leased to
George Fillingham, a St John Street hop-merchant, the
largest one becoming his own residence. (fn. 83) Meanwhile the
remainder of the terrace was built up on plots with
frontages of about 16 ft; these narrower houses were of different design, with lower floor-heights. Five of the nine
plots were leased to Francis Abercromby Gray, a surveyor,
of Wells Street, Cripplegate, and two others to Edward
Tanner, a carpenter of Grub Street in the City, who was
involved in the building of Fillingham's house. (fn. 84)

The east end of the terrace was built on ground leased
by Henry Penton's steward Thomas Collier in January
1786. The houses were again irregular: narrower, threestorey houses at the Baron Street corner (later 56–60),
shorter, broader houses at Nos 62 and 64, the last being
Collier's own residence. (fn. 85) He might have been the landlord
who had the misfortune to let the house next door (No.
62) to Thomas Cooke, who became notorious as a grasping miser. Cooke, a retired papermaker and sugar-baker,
who turned the garden over to cabbages and spent nothing
on repairs or decorations, lived there fifteen years before
eventually being ejected. (fn. 86)

Besides Collier, early occupants of Winchester Place
included another player in the development of the estate,
Henry Penton's lawyer, William Wightman of Lyon's Inn,
also Charles Cross, an apothecary, and Henry Batley, a
druggist. (fn. 87)

Business use of the houses in Winchester Place
began to predominate over residential during the 1850s.
Occupations of people working here included bookbinder,
professor of music, artificial florist, feather maker, aquatint
engraver (Augustus William Reeve), writing master, and
net and marquee maker. No. 11 Winchester Place (later
No. 72 Pentonville Road) was occupied for several years in
the 1850s by the architect E. C. Robins. (fn. 88)

By the 1890s private residents were no longer listed here
in the Post Office Directory, and several of the houses (at
first No. 74 and subsequently Nos 66, 70, 72 and 80 also)
were used as 'Stainer's Homes for Deaf and Dumb
Children'. This institution, which also had homes in
Paddington Green and Camberwell Green, was run by the
Rev. Dr William Stainer, brother of the composer Sir John
Stainer. Nos 70–74 were subsequently a remand home of
the Metropolitan Asylums Board, later becoming London
County Council offices in connection with education and
children's care services. (fn. 89)

Illustration 445 shows Nos 66–68 with the signboard of
the Cartonite & Arborite Syndicate Ltd, cabinet makers
(but latterly 'postal tube makers'), which occupied the
premises for many years from 1906. (fn. 90)

Present buildings

Two old houses at Nos 66–68 were refronted and otherwise altered about 1952, but not completely rebuilt, as one
building for commercial use; Wright & Tidmarsh were
the architects. (fn. 91) This partial survival excepted, the lastremaining houses of Winchester Place were replaced in
1997–8 by a 220-room hotel, the Jurys Inn (Nos 56–64).
Built for the Jurys (now Jurys Doyle) Hotel Group (UK)
Ltd, this is one of a number in Britain and Ireland designed
for this chain by the Consarc Design Group of Belfast and
Dublin. (fn. 92) The façade, in stock brick and render, has a
central feature of semi-circular steel balconies.

The large site now occupied by Claremont Heights
(Nos 70–88) was formerly covered with warehousing built
in the 1950s for Henry Righton & Co. Ltd, metal merchants. (fn. 93) Cleared in 1990, it was used as a car park and
redeveloped in 1996–7 as private apartments. These were
built for Furlong Homes plc to designs by Hazan, Smith
& Partners (Ill. 447). In addition to the main six-storey
block facing Pentonville Road, two smaller blocks stand in
landscaped grounds on the sites of Nos 12–16 Penton
Street and 51–53 White Lion Street. All are faced predominantly in stock brick. (fn. 94)

Nos 90–92 was erected in 1936–7 for Brixton Estates
Ltd to designs by Lewis Solomon & Son. It seems to have
been intended from the start for occupation by the briarpipe makers H. Comoy & Co. Ltd, also at Rosebery
Avenue. (fn. 95) Two more bays added in 1938–9 at Nos 86–88
have been demolished. (fn. 96) Occupied for many years by
Comoys, the building is now used as offices. It is of five
storeys, faced in red brick, and retains its original metal
windows.

Penton Street to Rodney Street

From Penton Street to Rodney Street the nature of
the buildings still shows quite clearly the effects of
Pentonville's decline as a residential suburb. For much
of the way the building line has been pushed forward to
the pavement edge, with thoroughly urban two-storey
shop premises. The former Belvidere public house, rebuilt
in the 1870s, conveys no memories of the old Belvidere
with its bun-house and tea-garden, and the racket-ground
where City men came for outdoor exercise. The shops
were built over part of the garden about 1839, and where
the building line moves back again, towards Rodney
Street, the buildings are mostly modern and industrial in
character. Hermes Street, which once offered a glimpse of
Hermes Hill and the White Conduit Fields beyond, is now
a short cul-de-sac giving access to public housing of the
twentieth century.

The Belvidere, built in the 1760s, was one of the earliest developments in the creation of Pentonville, and one
that perpetuated the resort character which the hitherto
rural district had enjoyed for generations. West of the
Belvidere tea-garden, the frontage to the New Road was
built up with smallish terrace-houses from about 1770. (fn. 97)
These were at first known as Happy Man Row, from a
tavern called the Happy Man, and renamed King's Row
in 1774 (see Ill. 528 on page 406). The Happy Man was
later the Crown, this name being in use by 1795; Hornor's
map (1808) shows it as a coffee-house. Dickens sets a short
scene there in 'Miss Evans and the Eagle', in Sketches by
Boz. (fn. 98)

447. Claremont Heights, Nos 70–88 Pentonville Road, 2007

Development of this part of the road was carried out
over a good many years, and under several building agreements or leases. Between the Belvidere and Cynthia (then
Ann) Street the ground was part of a large plot initially
taken on a building agreement of July 1769 by Robert
Harrop, merchant, of Coventry Street, St James's, and
later of Paris. Four houses, including the Happy Man,
were put up more or less at once, (fn. 99) but no further building took place until about 1786, when Harrop's executor,
Charles Harrop, gentleman, of Hammersmith, at last surrendered the 1769 articles so that leases could be granted.
Dr De Valangin of Hermes Hill took a lease of a deep plot
on the west corner of Cynthia Street in 1776. A decade
later the remainder of the block between Cynthia Street
and Rodney Street, extending north to Donegal (then
Henry) Street, was acquired on lease by the bricklayer
John Brown of Holborn and built up. (fn. 100)

Nos 96–98, the former Belvidere, and 1–5
Penton Street

The large Italianate public house on the corner of Penton
Street, in recent years called the Finca, was erected in
1875–6 as the Belvidere, replacing the earlier tavern of
that name on the site. It was designed by the architect
W. E. Williams and built by Robert Marr and is constructed of white brick with sparing stone or cement
dressings (Ill. 448). Nos 1, 3 and 5 Penton Street, in
similar style, were built in 1877 as part of the same development. (fn. 101)

The first Belvidere was built about 1768, and was for a
time known as the Penny Folly or Penny's Folly, after its
builder, and probably first proprietor, John Pennie, a
paper-hanging maker of St James's, Westminster. It was
called the Belvidere (or Belvidera House, as it briefly
appears in the rate books), from about 1774. (fn. 102) That
Penny's Folly was the same place as the earlier Busby's
Folly seems to have been a wrong assumption. (fn. 103) Pennie's
site, however, clearly existed as an entity before 1768, as a
bowling green (see Ill. 423, page 324), with the footpath
to White Conduit Fields passing through. The building
was set back some way from the front of the present
pub, facing the new Penton Street, and had a tea-garden
and bowling green at the rear with a long frontage to
Pentonville Road and a fine view over the metropolis.
Adjoining the tavern on the north, in Penton Street, was
the 'Bunn House'. (fn. 104)

Early entertainments recorded at Penny's Folly include
the antics of Mr Zucker's performing horse. (fn. 105) As the
Belvidere, the establishment became more than locally well–known for two activities besides drinking: rackets, played in
a court in the garden, and Saturday-night discussion meetings, where political subjects were aired, held with free
admission in an upstairs room. The clientele in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is said to have included
some notable figures, particularly writers and actors, among
them Hazlitt, a keen rackets watcher; Grimaldi the clown;
the illustrator Isaac Robert Cruikshank; and George III's
favourite actor, the comedian John Quick. The British
Horological Institute was founded here in 1858. (fn. 106) G. A.
Sala distinguished the Belvidere clubroom from the general
run of political meeting rooms by its 'eminently respectable
aspect', and he contrasted the radical views of the speakers
with their tamely conformist appearance. The convivial
scene was illustrated in his Twice Round the Clock in 1859
(Ill. 450). (fn. 107)

A rackets court was built at the Belvidere in 1820;
before that the game had been played 'in much more primitive style', together with Dutch quoits and skittles. The
court, which attracted some top players, was surrounded
at a safe distance on three sides with open refreshment
boxes for spectators (Ill. 449). There was also, by 1856, an
American bowling alley and, inside the pub, 'one of the
largest and finest' billiard saloons in London, and a private
billiard room too. (fn. 108)

449. Gardens and rackets court at the Belvidere, c. 1828

Though sports at the Belvidere were flourishing at this
time, the available space had earlier been greatly curtailed
with the building of Athol Place along the front of the
garden. The reduced garden did not long survive the
rebuilding of the pub in the 1870s. In 1880 the lessee put
forward proposals for building over it a substantial block
of model dwellings, to cost £10,000 and offer accommodation for sixty families. T. H. Watson, the Penton Estate
surveyor, was enthusiastic but the scheme fell through. (fn. 109)
The garden was subsequently occupied by a piano factory,
and later the Gloy glue works; another industrial activity
here, in the late nineteenth century, was the manufacture
of extractor fans by the Blackman Air Propeller Co. (fn. 110) It
now forms part of the Public Carriage Office site in
Penton Street.

Nos 100–154 Pentonville Road

450. Saturday-night discussion meeting at the Belvidere, 1858

The row of eight shops immediately west of the Belvidere
at Nos 100–114 was built in about 1839 as Athol Place (see
Ill. 451), and occupies part of the old tea-garden. Early
occupants included an optician, a bookbinder, a furrier
and a window-blind maker, a tobacconist and a bootmaker.
A ninth house, No. 98 (formerly No. 1 Athol Place), originally a pastrycook's, was incorporated into the Belvidere
in the 1860s. (fn. 111) The developer of Athol Place is not known,
but the name's Scottish derivation suggests that the
Belvidere's landlord at the time, Hugh McDiarmid, might
have been involved. (fn. 112)

452, 453. Nos 116–118 Pentonville Road, 2007. Courtyard (right), with No. 116a (a house of the 1780s)
to the rear, and former workshop in front; (left) interior of workshop, and manager's office

The houses typically comprised a ground-floor shop
and parlour with living-rooms or stores above, and a small
back yard. The style of the houses at the east end of the
row—faced in stucco with moulded window surrounds—
probably dates from the reconstruction of the upper floor
fronts in the early 1880s. (fn. 113)

Though externally similar, the four adjoining shops at
Nos 114a–118 date from 30 years later (Ill. 451), having
been erected in front of the two old houses at the east end
of the former King's Row in 1869 by an Islington builder,
John Sharman. (fn. 114) Early occupants included a jeweller, an
artificial florist and a haberdasher.

Today most of Sharman's shops form part of an organic
agglomeration of buildings at Nos 116–120 (and continuing round the corner at 1–2½ Hermes Street)—old
houses, mid-Victorian shops, small warehouses and later
additions, currently occupied by the publishers Kogan
Page Ltd and a rare survival locally of such accretive
premises.

Today the oldest fabric is a bay-fronted late-1780s
house at the rear of the site, until recently numbered 116A
(Ill. 453). This was one of the former gentleman's
residences of King's Row, set well back from the later
building line, now much rebuilt and altered but still with
a few original features. Until recently another old house
stood further forward immediately to the west (No. 118A),
but this has been demolished and rebuilt in facsimile. Both
houses may have been designed by the architect Aaron
Hurst, the first lessee. (fn. 115)

In 1872 Sharman built a workshop for the artificialflower makers in the yard, directly in front of the old
house, mostly of one storey and glass-roofed but with a
narrow first-floor extension along one side. The baywindowed rooms of the house, overlooking the workshop
floor, made ideal managers' offices (Ill. 452). (fn. 116) These
buildings were later used by a piano manufacturer, and the
London Sewing Machine Co. Ltd, and in about 1899 were
taken over by the Salvation Army as barracks and a
mission hall, which they remained until after the war,
reverting then to commercial use. (fn. 117)

No. 120 was built as a beerhouse in 1851 on the garden
of No. 1 Hermes Street, and was called the Welsh Bull by
1866. It was originally of one storey only, the first floor
being added in 1881 for the brewers Truman, Hanbury &
Buxton (Ill. 451). The ground floor was remodelled in
1893 by the architect W. G. Shoebridge. In this typical late
Victorian refitting the old bar parlour and tap-room
disappeared and a large bar counter was installed, with
subdivisions to make four bars of varying size and a jugand-bottle counter. The main entrance lobby, opening on
to the public bars, was on the corner, with a faiencecovered iron column at the angle. The beerhouse closed in
1911, a renewal of the licence having been refused. It was
subsequently occupied by a firm making tin boxes. (fn. 118)

On the west corner with Cynthia Street, the two
knocked-about old houses at Nos 130–134, now minus
their single-storey shop-additions, were formerly part of
the extensive cocoa factory of Dunn & Hewett. Daniel
Dunn, maker of soluble chocolate and coffee essence, one
of the first commercial occupants in King's Row, was
based at No. 9 (later No. 136 Pentonville Road) from about
1833. In the 1850s he went into partnership with Charles
Hewett, and in the 1870s the firm, who described themselves as the inventors of soluble chocolate and cocoa, took
over No. 138 as well. The premises were enlarged and partially rebuilt in the 1880s and 90s, when an extension at
Nos 6–10 Cynthia Street (see pages 421–2) was built, to
provide more space for chocolate-making, packing and
storage. (fn. 119) By about 1907 there was also a tea-room at No.
140 for the girls working in the factory, and apparently for
members of the public too. (fn. 120) Dunn & Hewett's factory
closed about 1930, and was subsequently sub-divided
and let to various enterprises, including firms making
Christmas crackers and radios. (fn. 121)

The red-brick factory at the corner with Rodney Street,
at Nos 152–154, was built in 1936 for the Ealing Radiator
Co. Ltd (later E. R. Engineering), which made car radiators (Ill. 454). It was designed by W. E. Gladstone Hull,
architect, of Wembley Park. (fn. 122) Originally the rear buildings and the return along Rodney Street were only of one
storey. A first floor extension in matching style was added
in 1952 to designs by John K. Greed of Richmond. Greed
also designed the low metal-framed building alongside at
Nos 136–150 (now a service garage), erected in 1962–3 as
a warehouse extension for Macready's Metal Co. Ltd
(based across the road at Nos 131–135), who had recently
taken over both sites. (fn. 123)

Rodney Street to Calshot Street

The two oblong blocks between Rodney Street and
Calshot (originally Southampton) Street, extending
north to the Penton estate boundary, were the subjects of
building agreements in 1786 and 1789 respectively
between Henry Penton and the brothers Alexander and
John Cumming. Alexander's take was mostly built up with
terrace-houses, some of the largest in Pentonville, but he
gave up the New Road frontage for the building of the
long-awaited Pentonville chapel of ease, later St James's,
Pentonville. John's ground, too, was built up with terracehouses, but he reserved the prime site for his own detached
residence, Cumming House. Facing the New Road, this
stood in a large garden extending to Collier Street, and
was flanked at a little distance by short terraces of goodclass houses, the ensemble taking the name Cumming
Place. (fn. 124)

Structurally, little of the original development survives
along Pentonville Road, nothing whatsoever beyond. But
the pattern set down along the main road frontage in the
1780s and 90s persists: almost unchanged on the east side
of Cumming Street—where the church, destroyed in the
1980s after a tortured history, was rebuilt in loose facsimile as offices—and still recognizably on the west, where a
few old houses, with some rebuilding, survive behind later
shops (Nos 176–182).

The front gardens or forecourts of Cumming Place disappeared by degrees. By the 1870s a few had been built
over, including that on the corner of Cumming Street,
where there was a single-storey extension used as a public
house, the King George IV. Similar extensions for shop
use were to cover all the terrace-house gardens before
many years were past; at the four houses adjoining the
King George IV, these shops were independent structures,
alleys giving access to the fronts of the houses behind.
Cumming House, much extended and no longer detached,
was in institutional use. Within a few years it had been
demolished for a large development of shops and model
dwellings on either side of a new street, Affleck Street,
a fragment of which development survives in the form
of Nos 166–174 Pentonville Road. Affleck Street was
reduced to a stump by the creation of the Priors Estate in
the 1970s (see page 431). East of Affleck Street there
remains a degraded row of single-storey shops, the old
houses behind now long gone. On the corner of Cumming
Street, at No. 156, the King George IV survives in the
form of a ground-floor bar in a new terracotta- and
aluminium-faced apartment block designed by Alison
Brooks Architects (ABA) for Woodlands Estates, completed in 2005–6. (fn. 125)

St James's, Pentonville (demolished)

Pentonville Chapel, later St James's Church, was the centrepiece of the suburb of Pentonville. Built in 1787–8, it
became a familiar if isolated landmark on Pentonville
Road, conspicuous in the foreground of John O'Connor's
view of St Pancras (Ill. 429). Towards the end of its life,
Ian Nairn enjoyed the 'splendid, racy rhythm' of its main
window, and found its yellow bricks 'among the mellowest and duskiest in London'. (fn. 126) Ecclesiastically the chapel
enjoyed little fortune. It was declared redundant in 1978,
damaged by fire, and pulled down in 1984. Its replacement, Grimaldi Park House, pastiches the chapel front but
contains no shred of the old fabric.

New churches or chapels were viewed as crucial
components in major Georgian schemes of urban development, and Pentonville's promoters did their best to
provide one. In 1777 Henry Penton persuaded the
Clerkenwell Commissioners for Paving to allow in their
local improvements Bill provision for a chapel of ease to
serve the residents of his estate. A site 'near Penton Street'
was proposed, and preparations for building followed.
The venture was scuppered by the vicar of Clerkenwell,
William Sellon, who was required to approve the scheme
but declined to underwrite the minister's salary. Since
neither the commissioners nor the churchwardens were
prepared to give the bond that Sellon demanded, the
matter dropped. (fn. 127)

Ten years later, with the building-up of Pentonville
advanced, work began on a chapel funded by subscribers,
fronting what was then the New Road. The new initiative
was doubtless in large part due to Alexander Cumming,
the Scottish-born watchmaker and inventor who was a
prime mover in Pentonville's early development, since the
chapel was erected on the front of the block of land taken
by Cumming from Penton under his building agreement
of January 1786 (see above). (fn. 128) This was almost certainly
not the site originally intended, which seems to have been
in Chapel Market (then Chapel Street). The first intention appears to have been to flank the chapel with 'handsome houses, as wings to the edifice'. (fn. 129) According to
James Malcolm there were to have been just two houses,
which would have been on a large scale, given the size of
the plots. (fn. 130) No such flanking houses were erected, and the
side elevations of the chapel as built in 1787–8 were regularly fenestrated as for an open site. Directly behind the
chapel, a narrow graveyard extended back between the
gardens in Rodney and Cumming Streets as far as Collier
Street, where two 'commodious' gate lodges made up a
residence for the chapel clerk (Ill. 531). Extra land on
either side of this strip was leased to Cumming at the end
of 1788, allowing for the graveyard to be enlarged. On
New Year's Day 1789 he was granted a perpetually renewable 21-year lease of the chapel and enhanced graveyard,
along with two fellow trustees, Penton's steward Thomas
Collier, and Abraham Rhodes, clerk to the Vestry and the
Paving Board. (fn. 131) This unusual leasehold status continued
for most of the chapel's ecclesiastical life.

It was evidently intended that the chapel should
conform to the Church of England. During its construction, its acquisition by the parish was discussed at a
meeting between the subscribers and the Commissioners
of Paving. Once again Sellon appears to have been
obstructive, with the result that it opened as technically a
dissenting chapel, with attendance restricted to paying
seat-holders. The first minister, Joel Abraham Knight, had
been a preacher at the Countess of Huntingdon's Spa
Fields Chapel, another foundation that brushed with
Sellon (see page 57). (fn. 132) In 1790, however, a Bill was successfully brought forward which inserted an obligation to
purchase Pentonville Chapel into permission to raise additional funds for rebuilding the parish church. (fn. 133) The
renewable lease having thus been acquired by the parish,
the chapel and burying ground were consecrated on 8 June
1791. (fn. 134)

455. St James's Church, Pentonville.
View from south-east, c.1900

Pentonville Chapel was the work of a young architect,
Aaron Henry Hurst, also one of the subscribers and a
participant in designing and developing houses hereabouts. Set back from the road behind gates and a semicircular drive, in plan and outline it conformed to the
typical Georgian preaching-box, brick-built and squarish,
with round-arched windows and doorways echoed by
relieving arches (Ill. 455). Externally, ornamentation was
confined to the Pentonville Road front, where a flat, pedimented centrepiece in Adamesque taste, made up of
Portland stone with Coade stone ornaments, was surmounted by an open-sided timber cupola, later described
as a 'baby belfry'. (fn. 135) A clock obtruded in the pediment's
centre, leaving the cupola above hollow-looking, though it
contained a bell. There were subsidiary porches at the
north end of each side.

The interior was plain, with a flat plaster ceiling and
galleries carried on Ionic pillars (Ills 456, 457). A semicircular apse at the north end formed a sanctuary, framed
by an arch and Ionic pilasters and flanked by vestries. It
contained an altar table surmounted by inscriptions of the
Lord's Prayer, the Decalogue and the Creed, and over
them a painting by John Frearson, an amateur who specialized in scriptural scenes, showing Christ raising
Jairus's daughter ('in West's feeble manner' according to
Walford), donated by one of the subscribers, Samuel
Walker, at the time of the chapel's opening. In front of the
iron altar-rails stood a square pulpit, later joined by a
Coade stone font in the form of a pedestal and vase decorated with fruit and flowers. Both the font and the altar
painting seem to have survived until the church's closure,
though the painting had been removed to the south aisle. (fn. 136)
Beneath the chapel were well-ventilated vaults, where
Hurst was interred on his premature death in 1799, as was
Henry Penton in 1812. Notable early interments in the
burial ground included R. P. Bonington, the landscape
painter (1827, later removed to Kensal Green), the
younger Charles Dibdin, theatre-manager and writer
(1833), and Joseph Grimaldi the clown (1838). (fn. a)

Pentonville Chapel cannot have been well built. Hurst
found dry rot in the vaults in 1797, and there was recurrent trouble with the roof. After Hurst's death, the maintenance of the chapel fell largely to the supervision of
James Carr, the architect of the parish church, to whose
designs extra galleries for schoolchildren were added to
the chapel in 1811. He was succeeded as surveyor to the
chapel by William Lovell in 1816. Gas was laid on in
1821. (fn. 138) The later nineteenth-century history of the chapel
was enlivened by the antics of the Rev. A. L. Courtenay,
who procured a definite district for it in 1854, when the
name St James's, Pentonville—current at least thirty years
before—became official. Courtenay decamped to his new
foundation of Christ Church (later St Silas), Penton
Street, in part because he disliked St James's, but then
returned (page 379). In 1874 The Builder noted that the
church's history 'has been for many years one of incessant
litigation and disagreement'. (fn. 139) That year also saw an
abortive proposal to install a mortuary for Clerkenwell
either in the vaults or in the burial ground. (fn. 140) Burials had
ceased in 1853, and the burial ground was neglected for
many years. By the 1890s it was, allegedly, so frequented
by prostitutes that 'some sixty or seventy' of them might
be there by day or night, and in 1896–7 it was taken over
by the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association and laid
out as a garden, with the tombstones set against the church
walls. (fn. 141)

Intermittent anxieties about the structure, perhaps due
to the downhill slippage of the clay subsoil and the decay
of the original oak and fir foundation raft, came to a head
in 1919, when in view of its overhanging north and west
walls a dangerous structure notice was served. A flurry of
reports followed. The incumbent, Robert Foulkes,
appealed for outside funds, stating that 'there is hardly any
church feeling or sympathy for the church in the parish'. (fn. 142)
Caroe and Passmore, the architects on behalf of the main
grantors, the London Diocesan Fund, suggested putting
steel tie-rods across the building at gallery level. That was
opposed by the diocesan surveyor, C. Wontner Smith, who
thought the construction of the Northern Line beneath
might be partly to blame, and more forcibly by Foulkes,
who in 1920–1 persistently tried to prevent Dove Brothers
from proceeding with the work, stating 'I shall never
allow anyone to put the rods through the church'. (fn. 143)
Nevertheless Foulkes was keen to have the church
restored, publishing pamphlets to warn the people of
Clerkenwell that if it were demolished the endowment
which Henry Penton had dedicated to the chapel might
revert to his heirs. Some repairs were eventually carried
out, but St James's continued to deteriorate. Following the
partial collapse of the ceiling it was temporarily shut in
1925, services continuing in the church hall in Collier
Street. Formal closure followed in 1928.

458. St James's Church, Pentonville, in 1963

St James's would almost certainly have been demolished
and its benefice absorbed into neighbouring districts but
for the intervention of the Rev. Percy Warrington, vicar of
Monkton Combe near Bath. In 1929 Warrington offered
to pay towards the repairs if the patronage were vested in
his name. He was rebuffed, but in 1931 induced an Oxford
architect, R. Fielding Dodd, to study the problem. The
following year he employed another architect, T. Murray
Ashford of Birmingham. It was on a technical programme
agreed with Ashford by Caroe and Passmore, acting for
the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, that St James's was
recast in 1932–3 and reopened. The main contractors for
this work were Coles Brothers of Peasedown St John near
Bath, who came close to liquidation, since costs doubled
and it turned out that Warrington's finances were
muddled; much of the remedial work had to be paid for
out of grants. For their part, Caroe and Passmore found
the Coles' work 'generally unsatisfactory' and 'not dealt
with in an economical manner'. (fn. 144)

Ashford's drastic policy with St James's involved the
entire demolition of the side walls from gallery level
upwards and the nave's reduction to a narrow vessel sustained by hidden steelwork. The church thus lost its side
galleries and assumed the section of a Gothic building with
low aisles, to the detriment of its dignity (Ill. 458). Ashford
returned the cornice and pilasters of the front pediment by
one bay round the sides, 'thus overcoming the weakness of
the old design', he claimed. (fn. 145) Fittings were installed into
the recast church by Jolly & Son of Bath.

Still neither the parochial nor the structural problems
of the building were solved. Following at least two further
bouts of reinforcement, the church was described in 1977
as 'a constant source of anxiety and expense during the
whole of the twentieth century'. (fn. 146) Next year St James's
was again closed. This time there was to be no reprieve.
Various proposals were entertained for reusing portions
of the church, but its structural difficulties and the fact
that since the 1930s it had become 'something of an architectural fraud' told against it. (fn. 147) The fulminations of
'Piloti' in Private Eye against the 'disgraceful and disgusting condition' of a fabric desecrated by fires and
squatters were of no avail, and in 1984 it was demolished. (fn. 148)

By that time the last act for St James's had been prepared. In 1983 Islington Council recommended a plan
originating with Cornerstone Ltd and endorsed by the
Church Commissioners 'for a complete reconstruction of
the building to its original 1787 external design for
offices'—in other words, a replica. In the event the site was
sold on. Not until 1990 did the 'strange and puzzling new
building' known as Grimaldi Park House arise on the
site to Allies & Morrison's designs. (fn. 149) Working with Kyle
Stewart Special Works, these reputable architects took
some care with the rebuilding on behalf of Scott Howard
Furniture Ltd, recreating the pre-1932 façade in simplified style and providing offices behind and to the sides in
the best Ibstock bricks (Ill. 459). Over the upper-floor
window on the front is a keystone representing Grimaldi,
while in a post-modern touch abrupt traces of stone
cornice bands appear on the flanks.

Most of the burial ground passed into the ownership of
Islington Council in 1968, the open space around the
church following on later. The whole block bounded by
Pentonville Road, Cumming Street, Collier Street and
Rodney Street having been designated as open space after
the Second World War, the remaining houses on the east
side of Cumming Street and west side of Rodney Street
were demolished. The resulting open ground behind
Grimaldi Park House now consists of an indecisively landscaped park, known at first as St James Garden, later as
Joseph Grimaldi Park. A playground area to the west is
divided from gardens on the east by the single patched
survivor of the two north—south walls which originally
separated the graveyard on both sides from the back
gardens of houses on the flanking streets. Largely
illegible gravestones line some of its walls and fences,
Grimaldi alone having a railed place of honour by the
north-east corner of Grimaldi Park House, though this
was not the original place of his burial.

London Female Penitentiary (demolished)

Not long after John Cumming's death in 1796, Cumming
House became a Roman Catholic girls' seminary. This
institution originated with a community of nuns who came
to England in 1792 from the Abbaye des Prés near Douai.
After staying briefly in Hammersmith, at what later
became Sacred Heart Convent, they moved to Cumming
House, where a day and boarding school was set up under
the direction of Madame Florence Vittu. This closed in
1806, and in the following year the house took on a new
institutional guise, as the London Female Penitentiary, or
Female Penitentiary Asylum. (fn. 150)

This charitable refuge and reformatory for prostitutes
was based at Cumming House (later numbered 166
Pentonville Road) from soon after its foundation in 1807
until 1884, when it moved to Stoke Newington. It was the
earlier and larger of two such reformatories in nineteenth-century Pentonville, the other being the Home for
Penitent Females in White Lion Street, opened in the
1840s (see page 386). During the institution's occupation
the original house was greatly enlarged, enabling a
hundred women to undergo its regime of 'mild discipline,
useful instruction, and the ordinances of religion'. (fn. 151)
Although not the first establishment of the kind, this was
one of the most important and well-known, attracting the
patronage of the Prince Regent and the active support of
leading philanthropists including William Wilberforce,
who became its president in 1823. (fn. 152)

The Penitentiary grew out of a scheme outlined by an
anonymous contributor to the Evangelical Magazine of
December 1804. This was to help prostitutes who wanted
to give up their way of life by opening refuges in quiet
out-of-town locations, and was intended to be on 'a more
popular and general plan' than existing institutions (such
as the Magdalen Hospital in Blackfriars Road). Women
and girls would apply directly for admission in response
to advertisements, and their supervision would be largely
in the hands of respectable London ladies. A feature
probably inspired by existing practice at the Magdalen
was that they would be segregated according to social
background, so that they could receive appropriate training for work. (fn. 153)

After further airing of the subject in the magazine's
pages, a general meeting was held at the New London
Tavern in the City on 1 January 1807, when the 'London
Female Penitentiary' was inaugurated. Behind the new
venture were a number of prominent evangelicals variously involved with the London Missionary Society, the
Religious Tract Society, and the British and Foreign Bible
Society, including George Burder, editor of the
Evangelical Magazine, and Adam Clarke, the Wesleyan
divine. There was also a strong City element. Subsequently, two distinguished medical officers were
appointed: George Pinckard, founder of the Bloomsbury
Dispensary, and William Blair, surgeon to the Bloomsbury
Dispensary, a Methodist and a supporter of the British
and Foreign Bible Society. (fn. 154)

Before long a number of 'chiefly very young persons'
were being looked after by the society, and after much
searching for a suitable home 'in an airy and healthy situation' Cumming House was found, and a long rent-free
lease purchased. Following alterations, including the construction of an attic dormitory, the Penitentiary opened in
1808, on the first anniversary of the inaugural meeting. (fn. 155)

By June 1814 the premises were open to public inspection one day a week, and in the course of the following
year received 2,861 visitors. (fn. 156) But although considerable
support was forthcoming, it never reached a sufficient
level for the large-scale extension of the buildings originally proposed, and for most of its life the Penitentiary
was not occupied to full capacity.

460. London Female Penitentiary, No. 166 Pentonville Road.
Main elevation c. 1811 (above) and part of the intended
quadrangle. Demolished

From the start, women took a major role in its running.
Management was divided between two committees: one,
all male, conducted external business, while internal
matters were under the control of a ladies' committee.
Perhaps the most important single figure was the Matron,
at first unsalaried. Accommodation was divided into
a Temporary Ward for emergency admissions, a Probationary Ward, where new inmates spent two months,
a ward for full admission (where inmates spent up two
years), and a 'Ward for Diseased Objects'. (fn. 157) In the early
years, until the premises were enlarged, a house in John
(now Risinghill) Street was rented for an infirmary to
prevent the spread of infection. (fn. 158)

The penitents spent their days engaged in manual
labour, chiefly washing, mangling and ironing, needlework, or making shoes and other items, for themselves and
their fellows as well as commercially: they were originally
allowed a third of the proceeds of their labour. Their time
seems to have been served entirely within the high walls
of the Penitentiary grounds, for the premises provided not
only for work but for worship and outdoor exercise.
During their stay, efforts were made to bring about reconciliation with friends and families. If they were still at
the Penitentiary after two years, outside situations were
found. Rewards were offered to encourage them to remain
in these posts: a guinea after one year, two guineas after
two. (fn. 159) Especially in its early years, the Penitentiary was
mainly the refuge of teenage girls. 'Indolence, bad female
companions, frequentings of fairs, the theatre, dances, etc'
were cited as among the causes of their becoming involved
in prostitution; some were victims of abduction and
violence. (fn. 160)

Though the inmates themselves were kept 'very properly secluded', (fn. 161) the institution proclaimed its name
boldly on a facia over the first-floor windows. The plain
appearance of John Cumming's house chimed well
with its sober purposes, and subsequent additions were
emphatically 'erected in the plainest manner possible' (Ill.
460). (fn. 162) In 1811–12 the house was more than doubled in
size by the building of an east wing and behind it a twostorey extension with a colonnade along the ground floor.
The idea seems to have been for a matching west wing as
well (thus filling up the entire frontage of the site) and for
the extension to continue right round the garden, making
a large quadrangle. Finances never allowed this. The west
wing, comprising a laundry, rose no higher than basement
level, though some years later an additional laundry room
was built at its rear (Ill. 461).

The Penitentiary site: Nos 166–174 and
Affleck Street

Close to the expiry of the lease, the Penitentiary society
decided that it could not afford a renewal and in 1884
moved to No. 161 High Street, Stoke Newington, where
it continued to exist until c. 1939, latterly as the London
Female Guardian Society. Redevelopment plans put forward in 1880 to the Penton Estate by a local businessman,
Alfred Attneave, were at last implemented. Attneave, a
clothier at Nos 190–194 Pentonville Road, pulled down
the Penitentiary and laid out a new north—south street on
the site in 1884–5, with shops on the main road frontage
occupying the forecourts of the old buildings. The new
street, following the naval precedent of Rodney Street,
was named after Admiral Sir Edmund Affleck, who took
part in Rodney's relief of Gibraltar. (fn. 163)

Attneave's architects were initially Carritt & Monier
Williams, who seem to have been responsible for the shops
on Pentonville Road, and perhaps the first few houses
at the southern end of Affleck Street, built in 1886. (fn. 164)
Although Affleck Street was demolished by 1970 for the
building of the Priors Estate and the roadway itself largely
obliterated, the Pentonville Road shops (now Nos
166–174) are still standing (Ill. 463). They are tall buildings of stock brick with red-brick banding and dressings,
and stone or cement cornices. Most of the houses in the
new street, however, built during 1888–90, were the work
of William Gillbee Scott (Ill. 462). (fn. 165)

No. 166D (now 174) Pentonville Road was first occupied
by the Howard Institute & Home for Young Women, formerly at No. 189. This third institution for females on the
site moved a few years later to nearby Cynthia Street. (fn. 166)

Calshot Street to Northdown Street

The ground here, part of Great Grace Field, was built up
in the 1780s as Pleasant Row, comprising two terraces
divided by Winchester (now Killick) Street and another
four houses further west to Providence Row (see Ill. 528,
page 406). On the sites now occupied by Nos 188–244
Pentonville Road, these houses were developed mainly
by Samuel Coney, victualler, and the builder Joshua
Hodgkinson, both of St Pancras. (fn. 167)

Early residents included at least three 'gentlemen'. (fn. 168)
George Medhurst (d. 1827), the engineer and railway inventor, began his working life in Pleasant Row as a clockmaker,
but moved to Battle Bridge and changed tack having been
badly affected by the 1797 duty on clocks. (fn. 169) The 1830s and
40s saw an increase in trade occupation. (fn. 170) At Nos 7 and 8
(later Nos 224 and 226 Pentonville Road), was John Edney's
boarding and day school, an enlightened establishment
where the emphasis was placed on incentive rather than
compulsion, and there was no corporal punishment. (fn. 171)

By the 1850s most of the houses were in commercial
use, and by the 1870s only a few front gardens had escaped
the building of shop-additions (see Ill. 426). All had gone
within thirty years. (fn. 172)

A notable manufacturer based here from the 1880s into
the early 1900s was T. H. Prosser & Sons, at Nos 198–200,
the leading makers of rackets, lawn tennis and athletic
equipment. (fn. 173) Established in Pentonville in the 1850s,
Prossers supplied universities and schools, and were official makers to Princes Club in Knightsbridge and Queen's
Club in West Kensington. They were also the first to
make lawn tennis rackets, under the direction of Major
Wingfield, inventor of the game. (fn. 174)

Most of the frontage from Calshot Street to Killick Street
was redeveloped from the early twentieth century by Lilley
& Skinner, the shoe company. Further west, to Northdown
Street, a mixture of shops and workshops remained until the
Second World War, when many were destroyed by bombing.
At Nos 212–218 was the 'Warrior Works' of Nuckey Scott
& Co., makers of taps and dies, a jumble of small shops and
single-story zinc-roofed workshops built on to old houses. (fn. 175)
No. 234 was the Cosy Corner Picture Playhouse. This 270-seat cinema opened in 1911, having been fitted out to designs
by Lovegrove & Papworth, architects. It closed in 1926. (fn. 176)

The large site at the Northdown Street corner, devastated by a V1 flying bomb, was used as King's Cross Coach
Station in the 1950s, with a temporary single-storey
building. (fn. 177) Proposals for redevelopment with offices were
refused in 1962, and in 1967–8 the present seven-storey
building, No. 210, was erected as warehousing and showrooms by Brixton Estates Ltd, to designs by R. W. Kenzie.
Largely glass-fronted, with red-brick 'pilasters', it was set
back at the LCC's behest to follow the building line of
Lilley & Skinner's warehouse to the east, allowing a
service road in front. (fn. 178) Latterly known as Webb House, it
was occupied throughout the 1970s and 80s as a BUPA
medical centre and a NatWest training centre. (fn. 179) It has
been vacant since 2002. (fn. 180)

For sixty years the block bounded by Pentonville Road,
Killick, Collier and Calshot Streets was associated with the
shoe manufacturers and retailers Lilley & Skinner. A
portion of their buildings, a warehouse erected to the
designs of the engineer-architect Sir Owen Williams in
1935–6, was the most striking of the twentieth-century
industrial premises along Pentonville Road. It supplemented earlier buildings for the firm, started in 1911.

Thomas Lilley started his shoe-making business in the
Borough in 1835, diversifying thereafter into large-scale
manufacture, distribution and retailing. Under his son, the
second Thomas Lilley, the firm became Lilley & Skinner
and expanded further. (fn. 181) Towards the end of the nineteenth century it was based at Paddington Green and
seeking a new headquarters for storage and administration
close to the railways, which brought shoes to London
from its Northamptonshire factories. To that end, in about
1898 it acquired the reversion of most of the block in
Pentonville Road between the present Killick (then
Winchester) Street and Calshot (then Southampton)
Street (Ill. 464). There were outstanding leases on the
various premises, some with several years to run, but the
company hoped to negotiate their surrender. (fn. 182)

The intention was to erect a multi-storey building
which would come forward to the line occupied by the
existing shops added variously in front of the old houses.
This was refused by the London County Council. It took
over a decade, and fruitless litigation on Lilley & Skinner's
behalf, before a new building line could be fixed for the
north side of Pentonville Road. By a compromise in 1909,
the firm submitted to a building line only 20 ft in advance
of the existing houses. The second Thomas Lilley, then
its head, pleaded in vain for further concession from the
LCC: 'the compromise hits us heavily and in addition we
have to suffer from the result of recent litigation … the
result to ourselves is very disastrous, involving the loss of
several thousand of pounds, and the delay of many years
in carrying out a much needed building scheme for the
requirements of our business'. (fn. 183)

A boot and shoe warehouse was finally raised in
1911–12 at Nos 192–200 by Arthur Sykes, an architect
experienced in retailing and the designer of additions to
Lilley's home at Clacton-on-Sea. Six main storeys in
height, it had a classicizing front faced in brick with stone
dressings and a balustrade above the cornice (see Ill. 465),
and an interior with Hennebique reinforced-concrete
floors and columns. The contractors were W. J. Fryer &
Co. (fn. 184) Piecemeal additions followed, at first by Sykes, then
after 1926 by Gordon Jeeves, the architect also of Lilley &
Skinner's shop in Oxford Street. Under Jeeves's aegis a
small block was added towards Southampton Street, and
a deeper repair workshop reaching back to Collier
Street. (fn. 185) A chic display room was also created in the front
warehouse. In 1926 the site was reported to contain some
three acres of floor space, and yet to seem crowded. (fn. 186) By
then the firm evidently intended to take in the whole of
the island block between Pentonville Road and Collier
Street.

A blunter architecture manifested itself in the penultimate major element of the complex, at Nos 202–210, with
a long westward-facing return to Winchester Street. Here,
abutting the building of 1911–12, Owen Williams used his
trademark concrete idiom to raise a warehouse of seven
storeys for storing shoes with three floors of stepped-back
offices on top (Ill. 465). It was designed in 1934 and
erected by the contractors W. J. Cearns Ltd. in 1935–6. (fn. 187)
The building followed the manner of Williams' earlier
warehouse at Blackfriars for Sainsbury's, but the prominent Pentonville block stood out more in London's
landscape.

The structure was in Williams' flat-slab manner, allowing the windows to go up to ceiling level for the sake of
good lighting. The loads of the slabs were carried by edge
columns along the perimeter, of square section with deep
internal haunches (Ill. 466). These columns raked back on
the top floors so as to allow continuous glazing to the
offices. Where the slabs were deeper towards the back of
the building, the perimeter supports were supplemented
at mid-span by massive columns of 5 ft diameter with
15 ft-square mushroom heads, instead of the smaller, more
frequent columns of orthodox concrete construction. A
large spiral chute whereby shoeboxes could be dispatched
to the ground floor added to similar chutes within the
earlier buildings.

Externally the elevations were characterized by rows of
Crittall steel windows, and plain concrete surfaces 'buffed
down with a revolving carborundum wheel and left
smooth, but not otherwise treated'. (fn. 188) Vigour was
imparted to the short Pentonville Road front by endowing
the staircase tower with extra height and expressing the
stepping on the outside of the building, an idea repeated
from the Sainsburys building. Though the block possessed
a modernist's structural candour, C. H. Reilly believed
its 'clumsy appearance' had 'little to commend it
externally'. (fn. 189)

The final major addition recorded to the premises was
a building occupying the south side of Collier Street and
the east side of Killick Street, thus filling in much of
the rest of the island block. Tying in with an LCC slumclearance scheme decreed in July 1939, this was erected in
1939–40 by the builders A. J. Willson & Son to the designs
of Donald Hamilton and Kenneth Wakeford. (fn. 190) After the
war Lilley & Skinner changed hands and in 1962 were
absorbed into the British Shoe Corporation. (fn. 191) All its
Pentonville buildings were cleared for the redevelopment
of the block after 1972.

No. 200, Nido London (formerly King's
Cross House)

Clearance of the former Lilley & Skinner site began in
1972 in preparation for the building of a sixteen-storey
office tower-block for (Sir) Stuart Lipton's Sterling Land
Co. This was the first large-scale office development on
Pentonville Road, and the proposals by Sterling's architects, Chapman Taylor Partners, for a dark, curtain-walled
tower—the first of two intended for the site—aroused local
opposition. The tower, known as King's Cross House, was
constructed in 1973–5 and let to the National Westminster
Bank. Debate about its companion, originally to have been
three storeys shorter, continued until 1980, when the
planners allowed it to go ahead at a similar height—a
concession exacted by the bank, which was otherwise not
prepared to transfer its training centre (and 700 jobs) there
from the City. This second 'black monster' was completed
in 1982, the planners having failed to persuade the developers and architects to introduce a contrasting colour of
facing material (see Ill. 428, page 337). (fn. 192)

At the rear, council flats were built fronting Calshot
Street (at Nos 13–53) in the late 1970s (see page 432). The
remainder of the site, on the corner of Collier and Killick
Streets, which had been acquired by Islington Council for
housing in the early 1970s, was sold in 1982 and eventually developed with more offices in 1990, also by Chapman
Taylor. (fn. 193)

Vacant since 2000, the towers were acquired in 2004 by
the New York-based Blackstone Group, who proposed a
mix of uses for the site—chiefly student accommodation,
having identified a growing demand particularly from overseas students. (fn. 194) A scheme by the architects T. P. Bennett
was approved in 2006, and since then construction has
begun with Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (AHMM)
acting as architects for the project, which has been named
Nido London (from the Spanish or Italian for 'nest').

Designed by Philip Turner of AHMM, with interior
designer David Marquardt of the Zurich firm Mach
Architecture, the scheme incorporates 840-odd student
rooms, 50 private apartments, some affordable homes,
retail units and an education centre in the two towers
and a new four-storey podium at their base, fronting
Pentonville Road. In 2006–7 the towers were stripped to
their concrete cores, fitted out with self-contained student
bedsits ('Nido Cubes') and reclad in coloured panels (Ill.
468). Each 'Cube' has floor-to-ceiling windows, and a
shower and toilet unit, brought ready-made from Poland.
Single rooms (measuring 16 ft by 9 ft) have small kitchenettes, while twin rooms share a central 'Hub' on each
floor for cooking and dining. (fn. 195)

The 'Nido' corporate branding is the brainchild
of Tyler Brûlé, founder-editor of the style magazine
Wallpaper*, and has been heavily promoted abroad. (fn. 196)

West of Northdown Street

West of Northdown Street, the north side of Pentonville
Road takes on a distinctly high-street character as it
descends towards the railway stations of King's Cross and
St Pancras, the frontage mostly occupied by nineteenth-century shops, a bank and a pub (Ill. 467). Development
began on leases from the Penton Estate, with houses built
in the late 1780s by Thomas Weston, bricklayer (whose
family had leased most of the land to the west as far as
Maiden Lane); William Rabbath, a cheesemonger; and
John Brown, bricklayer. (fn. 197) Apart from four numbered in
Pleasant Row, the houses comprised a short terrace called
Pleasant Place, divided from Pleasant Row by the entry to
Providence Row. Of the original buildings little or nothing
remains; a possible survivor may be No. 262, with a later
stucco front and a mansard floor added only in recent
years. For the rest, the buildings are late Victorian and
later redevelopments.

467. Nos 242–270 Pentonville Road (right to left) in 2007

The earliest of these was a branch office of the London
& County Bank, built in 1883–4 and later extended (Nos
266–270). The original building, at Nos 266–268, was
designed by Glover & Salter, architects, and built by T.
Rider & Son. It is faced in Portland stone. (fn. 198) In 1928 the
bank was altered and extended over the site of No. 270 with
a new building, designed by H. Jones and constructed by
Dove Brothers. (fn. 199) The extension, faced in Portland stone
and red brick, relates neatly to the older building without
closely following its style, other than on the ground floor.

A little later than the bank, Nos 246–248, a pair of tall,
Italianate-style houses with shops, were built in 1887–8 for
William Hollingsworth, then owner of most of this stretch
of frontage. The builders were J. Parkinson & Co. of Wood
Green. (fn. 200)

No. 246, a former shop, was fitted up in 1911 as the
King's Cross Cinema by F. W. Cleveland, architect. Later
known as the 'Cinema de Luxe', by 1914 it had been converted to a cinema rifle range, where customers could
shoot at 'life targets'. (fn. 201) This had closed by 1915. (fn. 202)

The later 'free Classical' idiom is represented by the
trio of shops with living accommodation above at Nos
256–260, built in 1912. Executed in stone-dressed red
brick, these were the work of Charles Granville Baker,
architect, of Bloomsbury Square; the builders were Rice
& Son of Stockwell Road (Ill. 467). (fn. 203)

No. 242, now a drama school and studio theatre, was
built in 1923 as a billiard hall with a lock-up shop (No.
244). It was part of the Lucania Temperance Billiard Halls
chain, founded in Wales in the early 1900s and taking its
name from a Cunard liner broken up at Swansea in 1909.
Fixtures and fittings from the Lucania were bought by
Welsh teetotallers to furnish their billiard rooms. (fn. 204)

Designed by North, Robin & Wilsdon, of Maddox
Street, the building has a Classical façade of red brick and
stone, the upper floor with an open pediment and pilasters
framing a Venetian window. As fitted out, it had tables on
both floors, the upper floor being of filler-joist slab construction to ensure rigidity.

The building was used for gown manufacturing after
the Second World War, and was occupied by the Medical
Research Council's computer unit in the 1960s. (fn. 205)

On the corner of Northdown Street, the building
comprising Nos 236–240 Pentonville Road and 1–9
Northdown Street dates from c. 1930. It was erected to
designs by Waite & Waite of Great Castle Street as shops
with workshops and offices over, and factory premises
behind. (fn. 206) The stripped-Classical red-brick façade has
suffered the loss of the original metal windows and the
imposition of another storey. Until the 1960s the building
was occupied by British Watch Cases Ltd, manufacturers
and distributors of the popular Trebex brand of watches,
and was long known as Trebex House. In the 1970s it was
taken over as offices by the British Railways Property
Board (London Midland Region) and became King's
House. Occupants since then have included the Big Issue
magazine. (fn. 207)

The white-glazed tiled façade of No. 264 dates from the
early 1970s, when the existing building was remodelled
by Raymond J. Cecil & Partners. The building is now a
doctor's surgery. (fn. 208)

South side: St John Street to Claremont Square

When the New Road was created, the land on the south
side east of Amwell Street was in two freeholds. One, at
the corner with St John Street, where the Angel Centre
now stands, had been part of a field belonging to the Angel
Inn and cut in two by the New Road. The other, much the
larger, belonged to the New River Company, and the
buildings erected there (Nos 25–75) are dealt with more
fully in Chapter VIII.

Together with much of the frontage on the north side
immediately opposite, this was the last part of the New
Road to be built up, from about 1818 until the mid- 1820s.
The easternmost houses (later Nos 1–23, now demolished), originally Angel Terrace, were built in 1818–20
under lease from Daniel Sutton, the Kensington developer, and William Dyke Whitmarsh of Salisbury, between
whom the land had been divided as part of the settlement
of the Angel estate (see page 443). (fn. 209) These were mostly
three-storey, third-rate houses, with front gardens and
small kitchen blocks at the ends of their back yards (see
Ill. 426, pages 330–1). (fn. 210) More dwellings, stabling and
workshops lay behind these houses, in Field Place and
Medcalf (otherwise Metcalfe) Place.

On the New River ground Nos 25–75, formerly
Claremont Terrace, were built in 1818–24. They are
the longest run of first-generation buildings left on
Pentonville Road, and the best indication of its former character, with their long front gardens and attractive cast-iron
balconies (see Ills 251, 252 on pages 198–9). Some of these
houses originally had stabling behind, in Claremont Mews.

Close to a busy junction, the Angel Terrace houses were
by the early 1900s mostly in use as warehouses, shops and
lodging-houses. (fn. 211) Much later they were blighted by the
long-standing plan to widen the Angel intersection, and
eventually demolished in the late 1970s for the building of
the Angel Centre.

The Angel Centre

In 1978 the decision of the Labour-controlled Islington
Council to approve plans by London Merchant Securities
for a 200,000 sq.ft office complex on this corner was highly
controversial. Until then the council had hoped to see
the site—occupied by dilapidated houses at Nos 1–25A
Pentonville Road and 401–445 St John Street—
redeveloped for housing and light industry. (fn. 212)

Although the Greater London Council's scheme to take
all this property for improving the road junction was
revoked, the finished building was set back to allow for
widening St John Street (see Ill. 427). Designed by Elsom
Pack & Roberts, the development comprises two buildings.
The main block is faced in red granite and pre-cast aggregate, but its most obvious feature is the wide expanse of
bronze non-reflective float glass, framed in dark-brown
anodised aluminium (Ill. 469). (fn. 213) To the south, a smaller
block screens the site from the rear of properties in Chadwell
Street. This was designed in a red-brick pastiche late
Georgian style, intended to blend with the early nineteenth-century New River estate houses there and in St John
Street—as the local conservation officer pointed out at the
time, the illusion was undermined when the long strip-lights
came on, revealing the reality of open-plan offices within.

Begun in 1979, the development was not finished until
1983. The main building was let to British Telecom in
1984; the other block is occupied by the National
Probation Service. (fn. 214)

Claremont Square to Penton Rise

The ground here belonged to the eastern of the Clay
Mantles, two fields cut through by the New Road. The
frontage was built up in 1769–70 with an irregular row of
twenty-one houses called Queen's Row (later Nos 95–135),
one of the earliest parts of the Penton estate to be developed. In 1764 William Lloyd, a St Marylebone plasterer,
had undertaken to build, but nothing came of it and
the site was eventually built up by William Meymott, a
Bermondsey carpenter, later described as a surveyor. (fn. 215)
The name was in honour of Queen Charlotte, replacing
the original name Prospect Row about 1773. (fn. 216)

472. Entrance to North London Baths and part of Queen's Row, c. 1863–5. All demolished

The houses, mostly of three storeys, stood on plots with
18–24 ft frontages. They had long front gardens, the back
gardens varying owing to the taper of the site (see Ill. 528,
page 406). There were two appreciably larger houses, one
later subdivided as Nos 123, 123a and 123b, the other No.
135.

At the west end of Queen's Row, the east side of Penton
Place (now Penton Rise) was let to the watchmaker
Alexander Cumming and built up during the early to
mid-1780s, the easternmost part with buildings fronting
the New Road (see Ill. 387). These included Cumming's
own residence (see page 301). (fn. 217)

Beyond the east end of Meymott's development, a triangular plot with a pond ran nearly up to the New River
Company's reservoir. This site, recently drained and
enclosed with a dwarf wall, was let in 1817 to Henry
Hammond, a Holborn glazier who was involved in developing part of the New River Company's estate and went
bankrupt the same year. A few more houses were subsequently built there, and by the mid- 1830s, if not earlier,
baths. (fn. 218) Known as the Pentonville Baths, and later the
North London Baths, these were given an ornamental,
pedimented street-front in 1863, the baths being contained in a long, top-lit structure behind (Ill. 472).
Swimming lessons were provided, and there were also
warm private baths. But it may also have been more generally an entertainment venue. A Victorian handbill survives announcing the 'Great National Circus' to be held
there. This was by the famous circus family, the Fossetts,
and top of the bill was Madame Fossett, tight-rope artiste.
The circus was 'Only open 3 nights, then put down'. (fn. 219)
The baths closed about 1902, and the site was sold as freehold shortly afterwards to the New River Company. (fn. 220)

Queen's Row provided 'spacious and genteel' residences
for gentlemen in the 1790s and early 1800s, and retained
a number of 'Esquires' into the 1840s. (fn. 221) Though increasingly in commercial use, almost all of Queen's Row kept
its neatly laid out front and rear gardens beyond the mid-1870s, except at the shallower properties near the baths,
where there were a number of shops by the 1860s. More
forecourts were built over with shops when new 42-year
leases were granted in the mid-1880s. These were occupied by various sorts of shop, with a few craftsmen such
as gilders, carvers, and musical instrument makers. (fn. 222)

As with most of the road, the character of the neighbourhood deteriorated in the early 1900s: several houses
were reduced to common lodging-houses, and many shops
stood empty and dilapidated. Their depreciation was
recorded by Inland Revenue valuers in 1912, who noted a
house at No. 133, divided up and let to poor weekly
tenants, which had been held on a 35-year lease since 1884
at £32 per annum, but recently re-let for a much shorter
term at only £25. (fn. 223)

The present buildings are mostly of the late twentieth
century. The oldest is the former Claremont Garage at
Nos 79–89, built partly over the back gardens of the
houses on the west side of Claremont Square and requiring the demolition of Nos 1 and 1A there (Ill. 473). Now
a storage facility, it was built in 1922–5 for the Midland
Auto Engineering Works, and was described as a motor
omnibus garage or coaching station. The architect was
A. H. Lester and the main contractors were Levy & Lester
of York Road. The long, roughly L-shaped building is
steel-framed and faced in red and stock brick with cement
and stone dressings, with a concave façade to allow an easy
pull-in for vehicles behind petrol pumps on the forecourt.
Intended as offices and showrooms, it had a ramp up to
the first floor in the rear wing. (fn. 224)

473. Former Claremont Garage, Nos 79–89 Pentonville Road,
in 2007

Nos 91–99, City Gate Place, is a former factory, of
five storeys over a basement, and was built in 1937–8
for the Ormond Engineering Co. to designs by Lewis
Solomon & Son. Ormonds were an important concern
locally, with four factories in Finsbury after the war, manufacturing screws, radio parts, and bakelite electrical goods
such as hairdryers and wireless sets. This was part of an
extensive works in Holford Mews or Yard behind (see page
228 and Ills 278–9). (fn. 225) Beneath the stripped-Classical
façade of red-brick pilasters and stone detailing is a steel
frame, with steel filler-joist floors. (fn. 226)

By the early 1950s the building had been taken over by
the Post Office for its supplies depot, and by 1959
Ormonds were erecting a new factory at No. 189
Pentonville Road (now demolished). (fn. 227) In the early 1970s,
Nos 91–99 became the photographic archive, studio and
offices of the Department of Environment's Property
Services Agency. It was later used as offices and warehousing by British Telecom, until 1994. (fn. 228) In 1996–8 it was
converted to residential apartments by ORMS architects
for City & General Estates Ltd as City Gate Place. The
conversion included a car park in the basement and two
penthouse flats constructed of steel beams on hollow
columns fixed to the existing roof slab. The contractors
were BMP Building Ltd of Hampshire. (fn. 229)

Nos 101–113 was built in 1963–4 as a warehouse and
showroom speculation, with ancillary offices, to designs by
Lewis Solomon, Son & Joseph. The contractors were
William Moss & Sons Ltd of Cricklewood. Constructed
on a reinforced-concrete frame, it has curtain-walling of
brick and concrete (Ill. 470). The principal occupants
from 1966 were the British Standards Institution, whose
main testing laboratory was here. During their tenancy the
building was known as Newton House; it has been used as
offices since the mid-1980s. (fn. 230)

Nos 115–123, Myddelton House, is a five-storey office
building of 1982, faced in buff and brown brick, with
bronze sheet cladding to the upper floor (Ill. 470). The
architects were the Bader Miller Davis Partnership of
Great Russell Street. It is currently the headquarters of
Citizens Advice. (fn. 231)

Paul Robeson House and James Lighthill House
occupy the site of the former steel-stockholding depot of
Macready's Metal Co. Ltd. This comprised an extensive
range of brick-faced warehousing and offices, stepping
down the hill at Nos 131–135, round the corner and down
Penton Rise. The original plain three-storey warehouse,
set well back from the road, was designed by M. Stanley
Blanchfield of Raynes Park and built in 1935. In the 1950s
a large office and warehouse extension was built in Penton
Rise to the designs of John K. Greed (see page 304 and
Ill. 394), and in the early 1960s another range was built
alongside the 1930s warehouse, fronting Pentonville Road.
Again designed by Greed, this exactly matched in style the
Penton Rise building. The site was called Usaspead
Corner, after a type of steel bar supplied by the firm,
which moved to Rugby in the early 1990s. It was cleared
in 1993, but another part of the works on the north side
of the road survives (see Nos 136–150 above). (fn. 232)

The present buildings, numbered 1 and 3 Penton Rise,
were designed by T. P. Bennett Architects as student residences for the School of Oriental and African Studies
(SOAS), part of the University of London. (fn. 233) Each comprises mostly single rooms with bathrooms en suite,
arranged like large shared apartments in 'clusters' of five
to seven rooms around communal kitchen and dining
facilities. (fn. 234)

Paul Robeson House, erected in 1997–8, is now owned
and managed by Shaftesbury Student Housing, part of the
Shaftesbury Housing Group, and is reserved for SOAS
post-graduate students. James Lighthill House, finished in
2000, was sold by SOAS to University College, London;
in December 2006 a 20-bedroom annexe was being added
by Levitt Bernstein Associates. (fn. 235)

The buildings are named in turn after Paul Robeson,
the American singer and black-rights activist, who studied
African languages at the University of London in the
1930s; and Professor James Lighthill (d. 1998), applied
mathematician and former provost of UCL. (fn. 236)

Penton Rise to King's Cross Road

The greater part of the frontage here belonged to the
Penton Estate, and was built up with houses in the late
1780s and 90s by the brickmaker John Weston—Clarence
Place and York Place, later numbered 177–205 and
207–237 Pentonville Road (see Ills 426, 528). (fn. 237) A small
strip at the east end remained unbuilt on, where the
gardens of Weston's houses in Penton Place (now Rise)
came up to the road. At the west end a small portion of
ground, forming the apex between the New Road and
Bagnigge Wells Road, belonged to the manor of
Cantelowes, together with the frontage to Bagnigge Wells
Road itself. Hornor's map (1808) shows this triangle partly
occupied by sheds or workshops, which seem to have
belonged with No. 1 Hamilton Row at the top of Bagnigge
Wells Road, occupied in the 1840s and perhaps for some
time earlier by a cowkeeper. By this time three houses had
also been built on this short stretch of the New Road,
which had acquired the name Bingley Place. (fn. 238)

Weston's houses, mostly of three storeys, with basements (Ill. 432), were gentlemen's residences until about
the middle of the nineteenth century, when trade and
industry became predominant. Occupants in the 1840s
included William Bernard Cooke, artist; Henry Bryan
Hall, portrait painter, and the sculptor Charles
Physick. (fn. 239)

An early manifestation of the changing character of the
area was the erection in the 1840s of a row of two-storey
shops over the Penton Place gardens (Lower Queen's Row,
later Nos 137–175 Pentonville Road, see Ills 474, 476). (fn. 240)
In 1888 single-storey brick shops, with flat zinc roofs, were
built in front of Nos 207–217 (west of Lorenzo Street) by
the new lessee, James Gordon Walls, a City solicitor. The
work of John Farrer, architect, they took the numbers
207A–217A. (fn. 241) More shops, some single-storey, some two–storey, were also built at Nos 219–231, again mostly by
Walls, and probably at about the same time.

Walls' most substantial improvement was the erection
of two blocks of dwellings at Nos 233–235 and 237–239,
originally called Gibson House and Gordon House, which
survive as offices, occupied since the early 1970s by the
charity Community Service Volunteers. (fn. 242) Built in 1889,
these were designed in the Arts-and-Crafts manner, with
a mix of red and stock bricks and white-painted plaster, to
the designs of W. Youlle of Great James Street, Bedford
Row (Ill. 475). The builder was James Hunt of St John
Street. (fn. 243)

Each building contained eight three-roomed dwellings,
arranged over four floors above the ground-floor shops.
Early occupants included the families of a railway clerk,
an American meat agent, an actress (Annie Blunt) and her
lodger. By 1901 there had been a drop in social status,
households then including those of a packing-case maker,
shoe-blacks and a lavatory attendant. (fn. 244)

In the old houses near by, the social and economic decline
common to much of Pentonville was more marked. Nos
137–205 were described in 1898 as 'very rough', with broken
windows, the resort of 'noisy young thieves'. (fn. 245) At Nos
207–217 most of the shops were empty and deteriorating
by about 1911, and the houses behind let in tenements to a
very poor and generally undesirable class of tenant. (fn. 246)

After Walls' efforts, redevelopment seems to have
petered out, though the City of Bristol public house and
the shop next door (Nos 241 and 243) were rebuilt in
1902–3, by the Forest Hill Brewery Co.; they are plain
buildings, faced in stock brick with red wire-cut brick
dressings (Ill. 475). (fn. 247)

Many of the houses and shops survived in lightindustrial use—such as printing, plating and the rag
trade—until the 1960s. (fn. 248) None of the original buildings
now survive. Between Penton Rise and Weston Rise is part
of the Weston Rise housing estate, described in Chapter
XII. West of this, in addition to the buildings described
above, are a former Congregational chapel of the 1850s
and a series of late twentieth-century blocks.

Of the newer buildings, the largest is Dinwiddy House
(Nos 189–205), between Weston Rise and Lorenzo Street.
Designed by T. P. Bennett Architects, this was built in
1996–7 for the University of London's School of Oriental
and African Studies, and contains accommodation for
more than 500 undergraduates. It is ranged around a
courtyard, stepping down the sloping site, the rooms being
grouped in two U-shaped wings of differing height, linked
by central lift and staircase wells (see Ill. 428, page 337).
Stylistically the building differs a little from the architects'
other work for SOAS near by (Paul Robeson House and
James Lighthill House, above), having warmer buff facing
bricks and green panels. (fn. 249)

York House (Nos 207–221), built about 1981, was one
of the earliest office blocks built on Pentonville Road.
Despite having already allowed the very large King's Cross
House development opposite, Islington Council still did
not consider this a suitable location for offices, and it
was only allowed after a planning appeal in 1979. (fn. 250) The
accepted design, by Alec Shickle for Trafalgar House, was
typical of the period, finished in dark plum brick, with tall
narrow bays of tinted solar-glass windows, on a reinforced-concrete frame (Ill. 471); the builders were
Trollope & Colls Ltd. York House has recently been refurbished as a mixture of offices, apartments and 'live-work'
units by Currell New Homes. (fn. 251)

Another office block, Caledonia House (Nos
223–231) was built in 1990 for Reinhold plc, in anticipation of the high-speed Eurostar rail link at St Pancras
(completed in 2007) and the expected regeneration of the
area. Its relatively conservative elevation, clad in red
'Dawire' bricks on an Italian granite plinth, was a revision
of an earlier, unsuccessful design in 1989 for a predominantly glass building with an enamel framework. At the
rear is a landscaped garden, which it was intended should
be shared by the office-workers with a hostel for homeless
women adjoining in King's Cross Road, as an example of
'planning benefit'. The architects were Michael Squires
Associates. (fn. 252)

Former Welsh Tabernacle

This chapel, more prepossessing inside than out, was built
in 1853–4. Known at first as Battle Bridge Congregational
Chapel, and later as Bingley Place Chapel and Pentonville
Road Chapel, it was taken over by a Welsh congregation
in 1889 and remained their place of worship until 2006,
latterly under the name of Capel Elfed.

The chapel originated, at a time of expansion for
London Congregationalists, with the Rev. Thomas Seavill,
who was keen to minister to 'the working classes of this
very populous and neglected locality'. (fn. 253) He was 'pecuniarily and otherwise assisted by John Morley, John Finch,
and Eusebius Smith, Esqrs., and other wealthy gentlemen', stated Pinks. They accumulated funds enough to
buy for £2,000 the present narrow site, a mixture of freehold and copyhold properties wedged between what were
then still the New Road and Bagnigge Wells Road, and to
build a chapel to the value of £5,000. (fn. 254) Its designer was
Henry Hodge, a young architect who had previously built
a Gothic congregational chapel in Kentish Town. The
builders were Rowland & Evans. (fn. 255)

In his first design of 1852 Hodge orientated the chapel
towards the south. (fn. 256) That was changed on revision to an
east-facing arrangement, with the body of the building
abutting Bagnigge Wells Road and angled on to the New
Road (Ill. 478). Here a deep area in front with steps gave
access to a school in the basement; a low tower, planned at
the north-west corner, was probably not executed.

As first built, the chapel failed to prosper. Pinks put the
problems down to poor acoustics and 'the non-erection of
galleries', (fn. 257) but difficulty in paying off the debt on the
building seems to have been the root cause. (fn. 258) Seavill
having resigned his ministry in 1857, the enterprise passed
into the hands of the London Congregational Chapel
Society, which promptly erected the galleries always
intended. Under the Society's aegis the chapel continued
until 1889, when because of declining numbers the
London Congregational Union, as it had become, agreed
to sell it to a branch of the Welsh Congregational Union
that had been meeting in Fetter Lane.

Under the fresh arrangement the chapel flourished
anew as the King's Cross Welsh Tabernacle, notably
during the long pastorate (1904–40) of Howell Elvet
Lewis, poet, hymnographer and preacher, commonly
known by his bardic name of Elfed. (fn. 259) His arrival coincided with the completion of alterations and additions to
the designs of Alfred Conder. (fn. 260) Since then there have
been few changes. The chapel closed in 2006 and is for sale
at the time of writing.

The exterior of the chapel today is cramped at both
ends, and presents rather forlorn flanks to the two streets
between which it sits. At first the west end was fairly open
to view, and as John O'Connor's painting of St Pancras
shows (Ill. 429), its high pitched roof was conspicuous
from a distance. The building is in a simple Gothic style
veering between Early English and Decorated. The facing
materials are Kentish rag laid randomly, with dressings of
Caen stone but tracery and doorways cast from Ransome's
patent stone. (fn. 261) The Pentonville Road front is partly
concealed by houses. Hodge's original porch was smaller
than the present double one of faience, one of Conder's
improvements in 1904, which allowed separate access to
the main floor and, by way of a new staircase, the galleries
(Ill. 477). Behind it is the gabled stump of a projected
tower, probably all that was built of a short, pyramidally
roofed affair illustrated in 1856. On the King's Cross Road
side the buttressed flank of the chapel is complete but has
been compromised by poor repairs and the raising of the
pavement, making the door at its west end inoperative.
Originally the plainness of this front, as perhaps also of
its northern counterpart, was relieved by a central gable
flanked by pinnacles and incorporating a small window
helping to light the galleries. This doubtless disappeared
in 1904, when Conder added a single dormer higher in the
roof on each side to improve the lighting.

Internally (Ill. 479) the chapel is a remarkably complete specimen of Victorian nonconformity's pitchpine
style. The eye is first drawn to the manful open roof,
close-boarded between the trusses. These rest on identical corbelled angel heads, cast probably from Ransome's
stone, and are of the hammerbeam variety; the spandrels
are pierced with quatrefoils and trefoils, while wroughtiron cross-ties are anchored behind little shields attached
to the main pieces. The east end is lit by a simple rose
window, the west by five rising lancets. A high gallery
runs right round the chapel, with seating on three sides
and the organ, installed in 1904, over the fourth, its frontispiece of pipes stepped to avoid blocking the light from
the rose. The organ console was brought to ground level
in the 1950s. The galleries are carried on cast-iron
columns, with ornamental spandrel brackets at the west
end only, and have fronts enriched with pointed arches.
At ground level, a complete set of pews and their platforms remains; those in the aisles are raked towards the
pulpit. In the centre, the elevated pulpit and ample
deacons' seat appear to be original but their position
probably represents the rearrangement of 1904. The
pulpit formerly stood further back, but was brought
forward at that date in order to create a vestry for the
minister and a new stair behind the east end of the
chapel. At the west end, the lobby is part of Conder's
alterations.

The main basement room below, used for a school, is
generous in size and divided by the continuation of the
cast-iron columns from above.

Adjoining the church is a small Gothic-style house, No.
245, now rendered and painted, with lancet windows and
a gable towards the street (see Ill. 475). This was probably
erected in connection with the church as a caretaker's
lodge, but seems to have become a private house about
1865 and was subsequently made into a shop. (fn. 262) The building was later acquired by a builder, George Ell, together
with the rest of the largely unbuilt-on apex site, which he
covered in 1883 with the present plain block of shops and
warehousing comprising Nos 249–253 Pentonville Road
and 178–188 King's Cross Road (see page 313). (fn. 263)

Footnotes

a. It was on account of this connection that St James's became 'the clowns' church', an annual clowns' service being held there for
many years. A statuette of Grimaldi and photographs of famous clowns decorating the porch were angrily swept away in the 1950s
by the vicar, who declared he would not have it looking 'like the entrance to a picture palace'.

1. For general accounts of the New Road see F. H. W.
Sheppard, London Government in St. Marylebone
1688–1835, 1958, pp.94–101: Catherine Durant, 'London's
First Northern By—Pass', in Camden History Review, vol.15,
1988, pp.15–19